Last season, audiences thrilled to the sight of Cicely Tyson making her final visit to Broadway in "The Trip to Bountiful". Since the actress is somewhere between her late 70s and early 90s (depending on the source), the very fact that she was doing several shows a week seemed special in itself, let alone that her fine performance was special enough to win a Tony.

Now Broadway audiences have another chance to cheer on a late-in-life star, Estelle Parsons. Known for her Oscar-winning turn in "Bonnie and Clyde" and also for playing the grandmother on TV's "Roseanne," Parsons turned 86 in November. On April 1, she began performances in the two-character drama, "The Velocity of Autumn", which opened last night (April 21) at Broadway's Booth Theater. Her younger co-star, Stephen Spinella, won two Tonys for appearing in both parts of "Angels in America".

"Velocity" tells of an aging artist who wants, at all costs, to stay in her Brooklyn brownstone, but her estranged son has other ideas. Molly Smith, artistic director of Washington DC's Arena Stage - where the play was produced to acclaim this fall - again directs.

Eric Coble's drama was originally announced for last season but couldn't find a theater. With the closing of "The Glass Menagerie" at the Booth in February, a window opened, and the play managed to jump through.

But do the Broadway critics think “Velocity” comes up to speed, or is ready to be put out to pasture?

Associated Press reviewer Jennifer Farrar is in the former camp and calls Eric Coble’s play “a wry, spirited Broadway production.” The playwright, she writes, provides “plenty of comic zingers” for the “powerful and ingratiating” Estelle Parsons. Farrar also lauds Stephen Spinella, who is a “delight” and “very likable.” She closes her review saying, “Coble creates a thoughtful, potentially enriching gift to the audience.”

Joe Dziemianowicz, of the Daily News, couldn’t agree less. In his one-star review, Dziemianowicz calls Coble’s script a cobble of “glib one-liners and florid speeches” and Molly Smith’s direction “static.” Calling Parsons “monochromatic and screechy”, the critic concludes, “this play elicits a definite response: avoid.” Ouch.

Somewhere between Farrar and Dziemianowicz is Hollywood Reporter critic Frank Scheck, who admits the plot is “a feeble, contrived conceit” and that the play “uneasily alternates between jokey, one-liner filled banter” and darker moments on the way to a “predictable conclusion.” However, the “wonderful” Parsons and Spinella (“who matches her note for note”) “have fully invested us in their characters’ emotional reconciliation.”

Talkin’ Broadway’s Matthew Murray wishes the play were as incendiary as the Molotov cocktails onstage, but alas, author “Coble really has thrown together just an `old age isn't much fun’ play that looks and behaves far creakier than Alexandra” (the Parsons character). He does praise Spinella for making “the cipher-like Chris into a credible human being.”

The New York Times’ Charles Isherwood, whose decidedly positive review of the play when it ran at Arena Stage was undoubtedly a factor in the producers’ decision to bring the drama to Broadway, comes back to the play once more. This time he’s slightly harder on the “wispy but amiable comedy-drama” but no less a fanboy for Estelle Parsons, who is “such fun to watch… [Her] starchy, sentiment-free performance never allows us to get too comfortable in her presence. … And without descending anywhere close to bathos, she brings a moving, rueful sense of grievance to the play’s finest passages.”

In contrast to the paragraphs Isherwood spends on Parsons, in her ** review, New York Post critic Elisabeth Vincentelli sums up Parsons’ performance as “spry” and “perfectly fine.” However, the “mildly entertaining” and “safe” play uses brush strokes “too broad to paint a compelling portrait.”

Newsday’s Linda Winer appreciates director Molly Smith’s “admirable minimum of sentimentality” but concludes, “Even with actors the caliber of Parsons and Spinella, …this is a once-over-lightly insult to a subject that deserves so much more than a mechanical showcase for gold-standard performers.”

The often-caustic Matt Windman, of AM New York, manages two stars for the play and compares it unfavorably to Terrence McNally’s current “Mothers and Sons”, which builds “provocative drama” around its confrontations. By contrast, “Velocity” has an “outlandish scenario” followed by an “extended, downbeat discussion” in which “the lack of movement adds to the boredom.”

Far more positive is Stephan Lee of Entertainment Weekly. Granting the show a B-plus grade, he opines that Parsons and Spinella are “engaging enough to power through what’s otherwise well-worn terrain. For a breezy 90 minutes…we’re happy to be held hostage.”

OVERALL: Despite a still-supportive New York Times and a couple of gently positive notices elsewhere, most of the reviews spell bad news for the play, which the critics feel is a talk-fest based on a contrived premise. Just because the issues are valid, they note, doesn’t mean the work does them dramatic justice. Considering the show’s box-office grosses have been dropping throughout previews, even if a Tony nomination awaits Estelle Parsons, it’s hard to imagine “Autumn” surviving until that ceremony, let alone, well, autumn.