'Crumbs from the Table of Joy' leaves you wanting at Lyric Stage

Godfrey Crump is caught in a kind of inertia.

The death of his wife has left him reeling, and the effects ripple through his family. Godfrey, unable to connect with himself or his daughters Ernestine and Ermina, turns to a religious leader, Father Divine, for comfort and direction.

This is the setup for playwright Lynn Nottage’s “Crumbs from the Table of Joy,” at Lyric Stage Company of Boston through Feb. 2.

Directed by Tasia A. Jones, the Crump family story is narrated by the eldest daughter Ernestine (Madison Margaret Clark). Nottage’s memory play is set in the 1950s after the family moves from the discrimination of Jim Crow South to Brooklyn, New York to start over. However, despite journeying north, the complexities of the time remain, with discrimination in education, housing and employment.

Godfrey (Dominic Carter, The Huntington’s “Toni Stone”) adopts Father Divine’s teachings on abstinence from sex and alcohol and keeps all the questions he has about life in a notebook or on crumbled pieces of paper in a box. Meanwhile, the sisters struggle to fit in at school and often escape to the movies where Ernestine imagines becoming a star.

There’s not much happening in the Crump’s modest apartment, outfitted with a large couch and radio until the girls’ well-dressed, communist aunt Lily shows up with a flask at the ready, colorful stories and cigarettes that are never far from her lips. Played by Thomika Marie Bridwell (superb in 2024’s “K-I-S-S-I-N-G” and 2022’s “Chicken and Biscuits”), Lily stirs up controversy with her sensuality and opinions, while Godfrey balks. He’s determined to please Father Divine — a real-life figure who led the International Peace Mission movement.

Glimpses of what the Pulitzer Prize-winning Nottage would later create, such as “Intimate Apparel” and “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark,” appear in this 1995 narrative, according to the show’s program notes. However, this play is rather quiet. It’s far different from the more complicated characters she created in “Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine” (which the Lyric presented wonderfully in 2022), the very fun production of The Huntington’s “Clyde’s” or — the most recent of her works — “MJ, The Musical.”

In “Crumbs,” the foot-stomping younger sister Ermina (Catia, in her Lyric Stage debut) has some fun-to-watch moments, but overall, the production moves at a glacial pace. Much of the time, if not all of it, is spent waiting for action: perhaps for Godfrey to embrace his daughters or to let them dance and dream big; for Lily to be as successful as she says in her communism work, and for her nieces to witness it; or for Ernestine to act in a school play or to write a script with her sister or her aunt.

But it is not to be. The closest the audience gets to any real action is when Bridgette Hayes’ character Gerte, a German refugee whom Godfrey marries in the vein of his cult leader after meeting her on the train, grabs his boxes of notes and tosses them on the floor. She, too, is desperate for Godfrey to connect with her and his daughters.

Ultimately, Ernestine delivers a monologue that ties up loose ends and tells the audience what’s to come for the Crump family. Even with that resolve, the Crump’s story quickly slips through my fingers once the house lights appear.

Lyric Stage Boston’s “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” runs through Feb. 2.