‘Morning’s at Seven’ Ages Ungracefully

There’s trouble on Main Street in “Morning’s at Seven,” Paul Osborn’s 1939 small-town comedy revived at the Colony Studio Theatre.

The play is about the complicated emotions and alliances that entwine even seemingly simple relationships. Four middle-aged sisters--Cora (Jan Pessano), Aaronetta (Ruth Crawford), Ida (Toni Sawyer) and Esther (Sandra Kinder)--should be living bucolic lives, and the humor springs from our realization that they’re not. (The title comes from the famous Robert Browning stanza that ends: “God’s in His heaven--/All’s right with the world.”)

Cora’s husband Theodore (Kenneth Tigar) has had an affair with the spinster Aaronetta, who cannot bring herself to move out of the couple’s sensible clapboard home. Ida’s 40-year-old son Homer (David Rose) has brought home his dimwitted betrothed Myrtle (Kimberley Messinger), which has only accentuated his own retarded Oedipal conflicts. And Homer’s father Carl (Beans Morocco) is given to mute “spells.”

At best, the play operates as Chekhov Midwest, with some nice turns of dialogue and offbeat characterizations. But it hasn’t aged well; by modern standards it seems dreadfully precious (Homer’s apron strings look like pathology to our eyes) and even more dreadfully long-winded. Those faults are only amplified in Robert O’Reilly’s staging, which grinds every last bit of homespun cuteness out of this dusty chestnut.

* “Morning’s at Seven,” Colony Studio Theatre, 1944 Riverside Drive, Silver Lake. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends April 28. $20-$22. (213) 665-3011. Running time: 3 hours.