BUCK STOPS HERE COMIC WRITER AND ACTOR HENRY JOINS A POWERHOUSE CAST FOR 'MORNING'S AT SEVEN'.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Writer

THE GENTEEL COMEDY ``Morning's at Seven'' contains any number of juicy roles and great speeches, most for actors in the 65-and-older range. Paul Osborn's folksy tale of a quartet of sisters and their husbands in 1938 middle America is usually revived because a company has the veteran acting ensemble to pull it off.

Director Dan Sullivan was indeed blessed. His production for New York's Lincoln Center earlier this year featured Frances Sternhagen, Elizabeth Franz, Piper Laurie, William Biff McGuire, Stephen Tobolowsky and Julie Hagerty.

And Buck Henry, who rejoins his fellow cast mates - along with newcomers Paul Dooley and Mary-Louise Wilson - for the restaging of ``Morning's at Seven's'' at the Ahmanson Theatre beginning tonight. Henry plays David Crampton, the snooty academic husband of Esther Crampton (played by Laurie), and the closest thing Osborn's play has to an outsider.

``He's a know-it-all and a pain in the ass, but he's groping toward something,'' Henry, 72, says of David. ``It's a very flashy part, although not terribly long. So I get to do these sort of arias in every act, and then I get to go back to my dressing room and read.''

That's Henry, the comic stealth bomber, who zips in and lobs a grenade of humor before disappearing. He barely said a word in Albert Brooks' ``Defending Your Life,'' playing a pinch-hitting attorney with legendary brain capacity. A frequent host of ``Saturday Night Live,'' Henry took a self-spoofing cameo in Robert Altman's ``The Player,'' pitching a sequel to ``The Graduate,'' to Tim Robbins' Griffin Mill. His script for ``The Graduate,'' co-written with Calder Willingham, earned Henry the first of his two Oscar nominations. His co-direction of ``Heaven Can Wait'' with Warren Beatty was the second.

A longtime humor columnist for Playboy magazine, Henry knows from funny. The writer/director created the spy spoof ``Get Smart'' with Mel Brooks. And the man behind such screenplays as ``Catch-22'' and ``To Die For'' can also recognize humor in other writers.

Osborn had it, says Henry, who saw the play's last Broadway revival in the early 1980s. In ``Morning's at Seven,'' a pair of sisters - Ida Bolton (Sternhagen) and Cora Swanson (Wilson) live next door to each other with Aaronetta Gibbs, their unmarried sister, sharing Cora's house. The fourth sister, Esther Crampton, lives within walking distance but is always around. On the day we're witnessing, Ida's son Homer (Tobolowsky) is bringing Myrtle Brown, the woman he's been dating for 12 years, to meet his parents for the first time.

``If the guy were alive today, he'd be a billionaire in TV sitcoms,'' Henry says of Osborn, who died in 1988. ``He knows how to play a joke out of character and play it back over and over again until it's kind of super-refined. The last big joke of the play is one of the biggest I've ever heard, and it's consistent night after night.

``Also, I can't speak for everyone else, but I can hear my grandparents in this play,'' he continues. ``There's kind of a way of speaking and an attitude that has pretty well disappeared from the American character of the 20th century. I told Franny (Sternhagen) that I believe she's channeling my grandmother in her part.''

Henry continues to shuttle between writing and acting primarily for film and TV. A religious playgoer on both coasts and abroad, Henry's ``Morning's at Seven'' stint was the performer's first time on stage since he concluded the run of Yasmina Reza's ``Art'' with George Segal and Wayne Knight two years ago. Sullivan had Henry's ``Art'' work in mind when he tapped the actor for ``Morning's at Seven.''

``I thought he had the necessary sharpness for the role,'' says Sullivan. ``And there's still a kind of twinkling sense of humor in Buck also. The role of David can get a little heavy-handed if you're not careful, but that's not possible with Buck.''

When approached for the ``Morning's'' run, Henry, who lives in L.A., signed on immediately. The prospect of working with Sullivan, the cast Henry knew Sullivan could assemble, and a schedule window made the choice an easy one. Henry enjoyed the experience so much that the decision to sign back on for the L.A. run - which plays through the end of January - was another no-brainer.

``I'm always happy to leave the really hard stuff behind to do this,'' he says. ``This doesn't have the possible depression that being in the middle of a script does.''

Comic script writing? Depressing?

``Because there's nobody to support you except yourself,'' he says. ``It's very bleak for me, and for some others I know, to see 50 to 60 pages ahead of you and not really know where the road is leading.''

MORNING'S AT SEVEN

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays; through Jan. 26.

Tickets: $20 to $60. Call [phone].

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Photo:

no caption (Buck Henry)

David Sprague/Staff Photographer