Franz, Sternhagen, Parsons Woken for Morning's at Seven, March 28-June 16 | Playbill

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News Franz, Sternhagen, Parsons Woken for Morning's at Seven, March 28-June 16 As expected, the Lincoln Center Theater revival of Paul Osborn's bittersweet and evergreen comedy, Morning's at Seven, is attracting some of the theatre's most seasoned actors. Elizabeth Franz, Frances Sternhagen and Estelle Parsons have been cast in the production, according to reports in Variety and the New York Post. LCT had made no official announcement. Daniel Sullivan will direct.

As expected, the Lincoln Center Theater revival of Paul Osborn's bittersweet and evergreen comedy, Morning's at Seven, is attracting some of the theatre's most seasoned actors. Elizabeth Franz, Frances Sternhagen and Estelle Parsons have been cast in the production, according to reports in Variety and the New York Post. LCT had made no official announcement. Daniel Sullivan will direct.

Franz climbed to the first rank of American stage actresses when she won a Tony for her portrayal of Linda Loman in the Robert Falls-Brian Dennehy revival of Death of a Salesman. Prior to that, her most famous credit was probably the title role in Christopher Durang's Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You. Since Salesman, she has played Holocaust survivor Lola in Donald Margulies' The Model Apartment at the Long Wharf Theatre.

Sternhagen has won Tonys for The Good Doctor and The Heiress. Rarely away from the stage for long, her most recent appearances include Ancestral Voices as New Jersey’s George Street Playhouse and The Exact Center of the Universe Off Broadway.

Parsons, while still best remembered for her Oscar-winning turn in Bonnie and Clyde, and Roseanne's mother on the sitcom of that name, she still frequently acts on stage. She starred in Happy Days at Hartford Stage in 1998 and in The Cocktail Hour at the Cape Playhouse in MA in 2001.

* The 1939 play — as well as Osborn himself — was nearly forgotten by 1978, when director Vivian Matalon staged the work at the Academy Festival Theatre in Lake Forest, IL. Some New York producers saw the mounting and decided to move it to Broadway's Lyceum Theatre, where it became one of the biggest fluke hits in American theatre history. The production was widely praised and ran 564 performances. (The original staging has lasted just 44 performances.)

Morning's at Seven concerns the doings of four Midwesterns women and three of their husbands, all in their golden years. As such, the plot offers ripe opportunities for mature actors and actresses. The 1980 Broadway production featured memorable late-career turns by Lois de Banzie, Gary Merrill ("All About Eve"), Nancy Marchand (The Cocktail Hour), Teresa Wright ("Mrs. Miniver," "Shadow of a Doubt") and Maureen O'Sullivan.

Following the 1980 success, producers and theatre companies raided the neglected oeuvre of Paul Osborn, hoping to find another lost treasure, but nothing matched the performance of Seven. The last major revival of an Osborn play was On Borrowed Time at Circle in The Square. The show featured George C. Scott in his second-to-last New York stage appearance, Nathan Lane as a character representing Death, and Teresa Wright in her final stage role.

 
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