"In Praise of Walnuts" starts out as a modern-day, hard-scrabble variation of Moliere's "The Imaginary Invalid" set in a midtown Manhattan tenement involving a hypochondriac housewife with an obsession for walnuts, her ne'er-do-well, chronically unemployed 2nd husband, and an over-the-hill daughter (and sole family breadwinner) that she is trying to marry off to an idiot, would-be doctor to save on medical bills and prescriptions. Fed up with her mother's nagging, the daughter elopes with a garage mechanic rendering the family destitute and prompting the mother to take in a screwball boarder with a menagerie of cats, bladder problems and a penchant for all-night seances. All of which sets the stage for a doomsday scenario of assorted disasters that befall the mother's hapless victims.