Off-Broadway Opening: MORNINGS AT SEVEN (All-Star Cast at Theatre at St. Clements)

Morning’s at Seven, Paul Osborn’s treasured comedy classic, returns to New York this fall for the first time in 20 years featuring an all-star cast including Lindsay Crouse, Alma Cuervo, Judith Ivey, Dan Lauria, Patty McCormack, Tony Roberts, John Rubinstein, Keri Safran, and Jonathan Spivey.

Directed by Dan Wackerman (artistic director of The Peccadillo Theater Company), Morning’s at Seven will play 12-week engagement, October 20, 2021 – January 9, 2022 at Theatre at St. Clements, 423 W. 46th Street, NYC. Opening night is November 4. Performances are Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 7PM, and Saturday at 8PM, with matinees Wednesday and Saturday at 2PM, and Sunday at 3PM. Tickets are $44 – $99. Premium seating is available. For tickets and information visit MorningsAt7.com or Telecharge.com, (212) 239-6200.

Since its premiere, Broadway has seen two stellar revivals: A 1980 production with Nancy Marchand, Maureen O’Sullivan, Elizabeth Wilson and Teressa Wright won the Tony Award for Reproduction of a Play or Musical. Another Tony-nominated Broadway production, presented by Lincoln Center Theatre and directed by Daniel Sullivan in 2002, featured Elizabeth Franz, Julie Hagerty, Buck Henry, Piper Laurie, Christopher Lloyd, Estelle Parsons and Frances Sternhagen.

Throughout its history,  Morning’s at Seven  has been showered with critical praise.  Among the countless raves for the play,  Ben Brantley of  The New York Times  hailed   “Morning’s At Seven  surprises Manhattan theatergoers every time it comes around. It’s rare that a Broadway comedy seduces by stealth. The discreet miracle of Mr. Osborn’s writing is in the shadows he weaves into the sunniest exchanges.” In his  Variety  review, Charles Isherwood wrote “the  play’s pleasures are durable ones, and it affords a cast  of veterans a chance to display their gifts.  Osborn’s writing is infused with clear-sighted but sympathetic wisdom.”  Terry Teachout of  The Wall Street Journal calls it “a great American play that ought to be far better known.”

CAST BIOS:

LINDSAY CROUSE  (Cora)  is an award-winning veteran of stage and screen.  Film credits:  House of Games,  The Verdict,  The Insider,  Mr. Brooks,  Prince of the City,    Daniel,  Slap Shot,  All the President’s Men,  Indian in the Cupboard and Places in the Heart  for which she received an Academy Award nomination.   Television credits include “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Hill Street Blues,” “Columbo,” “Murder She Wrote,” “Touched by an Angel,” “Providence,” “Hack,” “LA Law,” “NYPD Blue,” “ER,” “Frasier,” “Criminal Minds,” “CSI,” “Law and Order,” and “Law and Order SVU.”     Daytime Emmy nomination for children’s special “Mother and Daughter”.Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Album “The Complete Shakespeare Sonnets”.Theater credits include David Mamet’s  Reunion at Circle  Rep (Obie Award), Harold Pinter’s  The Homecoming  on  Broadway (Theater World Award),  The Norman Conquests  (IRNE award for Best Ensemble), The Belle of Amherst, and  Driving Miss Daisy  (Independent Critics Best Actress Award) with The Gloucester Stage Company.

ALMA CUERVO  (Ida).  Broadway includes:  On Your Feet, Beauty and the Beast, Cabaret, Titanic, The Heidi Chronicles, Quilters, Is There Life After High School?, Censored Scenes from King Kong,  and  Bedroom Farce.  She has toured nationally in  Wicked, My Fair Lady, Cabaret, M. Butterfly,  and  Dancing at Lughnasa.  Off-Broadway includes:  Allegro  (CSC),  Far From Heaven  (Playwright’s Horizons),  Road Show  (The Public). She received an OBIE for her performance in  Uncommon Women and Others  and Philadelphia’s Barrymore Award for  The Beauty Queen of Leenane. She has worked extensively in regional theatre, most recently in  On Your Feet  at the Muny and Kansas City Starlight,  In The Heights  at Music Theatre Wichita and  Yerma  at Huntington. Film/Television:  The Goldfinch,  “Bull,” “Lisey’s Story,””City On A Hill,” “Instinct,” “The Slap,” and she was a regular on Norman Lear’s “AKA Pablo.” She narrates many audiobooks and is a graduate of Tulane University and Yale School of Drama.

JUDITH IVEY  (Arry).  Broadway:  HurlyBurly  (Tony, Drama Desk awards),  Steaming  (Tony, Drama Desk awards);  Park Your Car in Harvard Yard  (Tony nom),  The Heiress  (Tony nom);  The Audience;  Follies;  Voices in the Dark;  Blithe Spirit;  Precious Sons  (Drama Desk nom);  Piaf;  Bedroom Farce. Off-Broadway includes  Greater Clements  (Outer Critics Circle nomination),  A Fair Country  (Outer Critics Circle nomination),  The Moonshot Tape  (Obie Award),  The Glass Menagerie  (Lortel Award) and  The Lady With All the Answers  (Drama Desk, Lortel noms). Film:   the upcoming  Women Talking,  The Devil’s Advocate,  Compromising Positions,  Love Hurts,  Brighton Beach Memoirs,  Flags of Our Fathers,  What Alice Found and Big Stone Gap. TV:   “Designing Women,” “What the Deaf Man Heard” (Emmy nomination), “Nurse Jackie,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “White Collar” and “New Amsterdam.”

DAN LAURIA  (Thor)  is best known as the dad on the ABC Emmy winning TV show “The Wonder Years.” Dan has performed in over 75 episodic TV shows & has a score of films to his credit.   Dan is best known on   Broadway as Vince Lombardi in the play  Lombardi  and as the narrator in the Tony nominated Christmas saga  A Christmas story The Musical. Dan has written, directed, or acted in over 60 Equity productions.

PATTY McCORMACK  (Esther).  From her Oscar and Golden Globe nominated performance in  The Bad Seed  to work in acclaimed films  Frost/Nixon  and  The Master; starring in her own television series “Peck’s Bad Girl” to costarring on “I Remember Mama,” “The Ropers,” “Dallas” and “The Sopranos”; to more than two dozen performances on stage with roles in Broadway shows  Touchstone  and  The Bad Seed  by the time she was eight, Patty’s career spans more than seven decades. Her stage work includes  Wait Until Dark,  Cat On a Hot Tin Roof,  The Sisters Rosensweig,  Barefoot in the Park  and  Rumors. Her dozens of film roles include  Kathy O’,  Huckleberry Finn,  Bug,  House of Deadly Secrets  for Netflix, Hallmark’s  Christmas in Evergreen:  Tidings of Joy, and a special appearance in Rob Lowe’s adaptation of Lifetime’s  The Bad Seed. Her more than 250 guest starring appearances on television include “Playhouse 90”, “Route 66,” “Love Boat,” “Murder She Wrote,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “NYPD Blue” and “General Hospital.”

TONY ROBERTS  (David)  Broadway:  Xanadu,  The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, The Royal Family,  Victor/Victoria. Absurd Person Singular,  Sugar,  How Now, Dow Jones,  (Tony Award nom.)  Play It Again, Sam,  (Tony Award nom.)  Don’t Drink The Water,  Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, and  a dozen others. Starred in the first revival of  Samuel Beckett’s  Endgame  (Irish Repertory  Theater. NYC). Was awarded the London Critic’s Poll Award for his performance in  Promises. Promises  overseas. Films:  Annie Hall,  Play It Again, Sam,  Serpico,  The Taking of Pelham  One, Two, Three, (the original),  Radio Days,  18 Again!,  Star Spangled Girl,  A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy,  Switch,  etc. TV: Arthur Miller’s  The American  Clock, Saul Bellow’s  Seize the Day, “Rosetti and  Ryan,” “The Four Seasons,” etc. More than 100  audio books, including 64 (so far) of the Stuart Woods  crime  series playing Stone Barrington and all other characters. Attended  Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art  and graduated from Northwestern University.

JOHN RUBINSTEIN  (Carl)  created the title role in the Broadway musical  Pippin, directed by Bob Fosse, and won the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for his performance in  Children of a Lesser God. Other Broadway appearances include  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,  Ragtime,  Hurlyburly,  M. Butterfly,  The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,  Love Letters,  Getting Away with Murder, and the Diane Paulus  Pippin  revival. Off-Broadway, he won the Lucille Lortel Award as Best Actor for Elmer Rice’s  Counsellor-at-Law,  directed by Dan Wackerman at the Peccadillo Theater Company.  He has starred in two TV series, “Family” (Emmy nomination) and “Crazy Like A Fox”, and in over 300 episodes and miniseries. Films include  Being the Ricardos,  Hello, I Must Be Going,  21 Grams,  Red Dragon,  The Boys from Brazil,  Someone To Watch Over Me,  Daniel,  The Car, and  Getting Straight. He is a director, a composer of film music (Jeremiah Johnson,  The Candidate), a teacher, and has recorded over 200  audiobooks. He is married to Bonnie Burgess, and their son Max is the youngest of his five children, joining Jessica, Michael, Peter, and Jacob.

KERI SAFRAN  (Myrtle)  Theatre:  Forbidden Broadway  (dir. Gerard Alessandrini); Barrington Stage Company’s  10×10  (2018-2021, dirs. Julianne Boyd & Matt Penn) and  Typhoid Mary  (dir. Matt Penn); titular canine in  Sylvia  (Flat Rock Playhouse);  It’s a Wonderful Life  (dir. Peter Amster); Lina Lamont/Singin’ in the Rain  (Zach Theatre);  City of Light  (Connelly Theatre, dir. Cady Huffman, opposite Val Pettiford); multiple workshops of  Stu for Silverton, a new musical about the first transgender mayor elected in America. TV/Film:  Blush  (Sundance);  Before the Sun Explodes  (SXSW); Netflix’s  Soundtrack;  Ray Donovan; Richard Linklater’s  $5.15/hr.;  “The Blacklist”;  “The Real O’Neals”; “Dollhouse”;  “HIMYM”  et al. Groundlings Sunday Company Alum. Keri is a Dialect Coach for characters on NBC’s ‘Young Rock,’ Showtime’s ‘The First Lady’ and HBO Max’s ‘The Staircase’ et al, and at theatres around the country. She runs a BIPOC Scholarship Program at her private coaching practice.    www.kerisafran.com; @kerisafran

JONATHAN SPIVEY  (Homer)  Broadway:  The Front Page, Act One  (later televised for PBS). Off Broadway:  Summer and Smoke  (Classic Stage Company/Transport Group),  Smart Blonde  (59E59). Regional favorites:  Arcadia (Yale Rep),  Picasso at the Lapin Agile  (Long Wharf),  Indecent  (Denver Center),  His Girl Friday,  Man of La Mancha  (Barrington Stage),  The Thanksgiving Play  (Rep Theatre of St. Louis),  Born Yesterday  (Maltz Jupiter),  Art  (Penguin Rep),  Baskerville  (Syracuse Stage),  Souvenir  (Heritage Rep),  The All Night Strut  (Milwaukee Rep),  The Other Josh Cohen  (Geva),  Cyrano de Bergerac  (Virginia Rep),  Room Service  (Hope Summer Rep) and twelve shows including  Death of a Salesman, Twelfth Night,  and  Richard III  at the Old Globe in San Diego where he earned his MFA.  Jonathan soon appears in HBO’s  The Gilded Age  and  voiced Sonny in  Red Dead Redemption II.  www.jspivey.com

PAUL OSBORN  (Playwright)  was born in Evansville, Indiana, in 1901 and died in 1988. He studied at the Yale School of Drama under George Pierce Baker and made his professional debut as a playwright on Broadway with  Hotbed  in 1928. Mr. Osborn’s other Broadway plays include  The Vinegar Tree  (which was selected as one of the ten best plays of the1930 season),  Oliver Oliver,  On Borrowed Time,  The Innocent Voyage,  Maiden Voyage,  Hot September  and  Contessa. He also wrote the successful stage adaptations of the novels  A Bell For Adano,  Point No Return  and  The World of Suzie Wong. Mr. Osborn’s numerous screenplays include  South Pacific,  Sayonara,  Homecoming,  Forever,  The Young in Heart,  Cry Havoc,  Madame Curie,  The Yearling,  Portrait of Jennie,  East of Eden,  Wild River  and  John Brown’s Body.