In Theatre Breaking Through Barriers' merely serviceable production of A.R. Gurney's The Middle Ages, now at Theatre Row, the biggest problem isn't that actor George Ashiotis, as WASP patriarch Charles, doesn't make eye contact with the other players or the audience -- because he happens to be blind. It's that he's simply miscast in the part, lacking the necessary stature, authority, and, perhaps most importantly, speech patterns of this powerful man. Adding to the misfit, costume designer Chloe Chapin has him got up in outfits that would make a bona fide defender of the old guard blanch.

Yet, there are other good attributes on view in this revival of Gurney's 1977 play, which is often rega[...]