Morning’s at Seven

A comedy about life in small-town American circa 1922, Morning's at Seven is a story of a western family whose manners and family loyalties are tested when one of them brings his long-time girlfriend home to meet the folks.

The Gibb sisters and their men have been living a little too close to each other for about a half-century. They are the steady Cora, married to the perennially jolly Thor; the long-suffering Ida, married to pathetic Carl; the nosy, flame-haired maiden aunt Aaronetta; and Esther, the eldest, married an amazing 50 years to the priggish David.

When the play opens, Homer, the son of Carl and Ida, 40 years old and still living at home, is finally bringing his fiancee of seven years -- he'd been dating her, sort of, for 12 -- to meet the folks. The folks, of course, are thrilled, for nothing much has happened for decades. They are enchanted with Myrtle, and she with them.

So what's the problem? For one thing Homer has an appalling case of arrested pre-adolescence; the thought of sex so terrifies him that he can't believe his ears when Ida suggests installing a double bed for him and Myrtle. Myrtle is also hardly more than a child; at 39 she gushes to one and all like a teenager with a crush. "I've never had so many people be so nice to me all at once!" she bubbles. But 24 hours with the Gibb sisters teach her that the men in the family can be rolled like dice; she has no problem taking advantage of Homer's ignorance of the facts of life.

More complications arise, but all's well that ends well, and the ending, indeed, has a delightful, laughable little twist.