Certainly the sentimentality remains. Tom Jones' book and lyrics and Harvey Schmidt's music occasionally tiptoe into the darker territory of marital unpleasantness but quickly retreat to sunnier places. Still, the piece works. Those familiar with Jones and Schmidt's more famous musical, The Fantasticks , will know the team's skill at creating small, quirky songs of genuine wit and charm, and they do it again here. Intimate is certainly the word here.
Many suburban homes have bigger bathrooms than the stage at Walnut Studio.
Sometimes the actors seem physically constrained, and with no distance from the audience it's much harder to create the illusion that the characters begin young and end old. Mary Martin made something utterly heartbreaking of Agnes' twilight years. Whelan doesn't quite do that, but she's a likeable performer with a lovely voice. Schiff's singing is spottier, but he has compensatory charm and a stage veteran's bottomless bag of tricks. 33 years ago, that taught me something about the magic of theater.