All this loving attention to the play's philosophical superstructure does little to alleviate the stiffness of the actual scenes, which are filled with the kind of canned dialogue and bald exposition that Monty Python and other English satirists would come to savage a few decades later. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the performances - including that of Ms. McGovern, who lately played a mother of similar vintage but more anodyne personality on 'Downton Abbey' - are often overstated.