Holiday Auto-Post: A Promised Review

Happy holidays, everyone!  To fill the holiday lull, I promised I would share this old review I wrote for some chums in the pre-blog days.  I admit it - I want to see new works by women and writers of color, but I would also love to see a new production of this play.  The transfer I mentioned DID happen!  The play sadly only ran a few months on Broadway, but it did get nominated for a Best Play Tony and Hallie Foote got a nom, too.  I would truly love to experience it again.

10/24/07:  I saw the new Horton Foote play at Primary Stages last night.  LOVED IT.  I’ll just say that I always love me a Horton Foote play.  I do realize, however, that some people equate watching Horton Foote plays to watching paint dry.  I find those people ridiculous.  I am not of that persuasion. 

Gerry Schoenfeld and Roger Berlind were there last night, so I wonder if a transfer is in the works.  I can certainly see it doing pretty well in a small-ish house.  The audience was just eating it up last night and there was a huge standby line outside the theater when I got there.

It’s just a wonderfully made play about delightfully eccentric people.  Well, that describes most of Horton’s plays, doesn’t it?!  But, as always, these are people you immediately recognize and take to your hearts, warts and all.  I once told Horton how much my mom and I loved his plays and how he seems to be writing about our family and he just smiled.  Everyone thinks he’s writing about their family!  Because these people are so universal without being stereotypical.  It’s just such lyrical, gentle, accomplished writing.

The play is about, funnily enough, dividing an estate, and the action all takes place in the family homestead in Texas.  But it’s also about family and learning to love people as they are.  The dialogue is just so true, from the arguments about which cousin married the drunkard, to which hymns should be played at which funerals.

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

All of the actors were grand, from Elizabeth Ashley on down (I firmly believe Ms. Ashley met my great-grandmother and based the portrayal on her), but the person that registered the strongest to me was, surprisingly, Gerald McRaney.  He just broke my heart as the n’er-do-well son.  I was so moved by his performance and it surprised me because I don’t normally like him that much on screen.  I don’t dislike him, but he doesn’t really resonate for me, I guess.  But he sure did last night.  Maybe he touched me because I had a great-uncle like him, charming, handsome, and...an alcoholic n'er-do-well.  We don't even know what happened to Uncle James, he just disappeared one day and was never heard from again, which seems rather like a Horton Foote character development to me.

Everyone is good, though, although some of the younger actors perhaps were a little less lived-in with their roles, but it didn’t bother me.  I was a tiny bit thrown off, though, by one of the actor’s appearance—he looked way too old to be Elizabeth Ashley’s grandson (and Penny Fuller’s son), but oh well.

The whole show really had me at hello—the pre-show music started off with some hymns and immediately I’m taken back to my childhood and singing with my grandparents.  The warm fuzzy feeling lasted all night and I’m so happy I got to see this play.  I hope it finds another place to run so that more people can have the experience.