The Young Man from Atlanta

C

When I saw the original production of Horton Foote’s drama in 1995, I was disappointed. When it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, I was surprised and puzzled. In the years since, I have enjoyed several plays by Foote, including The Trip to Bountiful, Dividing the Estate and The Orphans’ Home Cycle. When Signature Theatre announced this revival, I was curious to see whether I had somehow underestimated the play the first time around and whether my greater exposure to Foote’s work might change my mind. Unfortunately, I think I got it right the first time. Of the plays by Foote I have seen, I would have to place this one at the bottom of the list. Even when it was new, it seemed dated and it hasn’t improved with age. Furthermore, the current production is flat-footed (pun intended). As Will Kidder, the 61-year-old Houston businessman whose American dream collapses in an instant when he is fired from his long-time job, Aidan Quinn (A Streetcar Named Desire, Fool for Love) is believable but not memorable. As his cosseted but emotionally starving wife Lily Dale, Kristine Nielsen (Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) is miscast. Her performances in comic roles are always a treat to see, but here she seems to be fighting too hard to suppress her natural exuberance. Six months prior to the time of the play, their 37-year-old son Bill, who fled Houston for Atlanta at his earliest opportunity, drowned in a Florida lake while on a business trip. Although both Will and Lily Dale suspect it was suicide, they cannot even broach the subject with each other. The title character is Bill’s Atlanta roommate Randy, unseen in the play, who, as Will tells it, cried more at Bill’s funeral than Lily Dale. Will is suspicious of Randy’s motives and forbids Lily Dale from contacting him. She disobeys, with dire consequences. Lily Dale’s stepfather Pete (Stephen Payne; Straight White Men), of whom she is very fond, has just moved into their home. His grandnephew Carson (Jon Orsini; The Nance), who conveniently lived in the same boardinghouse as Bill and Randy, turns up for a visit and says that everything Randy has told Lilly Dale is a lie. We question whether Carson might perhaps be the liar. We also meet Will’s boss Ted (Devon Abner; The Trip to Bountiful, Dividing the Estate), Will’s subordinate and soon-to-be successor Tom (Dan Bittner; The Vertical Hour), the Kidders’ maid Clara (Harriett D. Foy; Once on This Island) and their maid thirty some years before, Etta Doris (Pat Bowie; The Trip to Bountiful). Her recollection of Bill as a child and her forthright expression of religious belief should be transformative for the Kidders, but it wasn’t impactful, at least not for me. There are other subplots including a puzzling confession of a misdeed from 20 years ago by Lily Dale and her doubts about whether Pete had serially mistreated women. In a rather heavy-handed metaphor, Lily Dale is obsessed to find out the truth about the Disappointment Club, which she is convinced Eleanor Roosevelt has started to lead maids to accept jobs and then fail to show up on the first day, just to spite Southern women. The themes of the hollowness of the American dream, the relentlessness of change, the power of denial, the use of money either to avoid intimacy or to seek it and the decreasing relevance of small town virtues in the big city all are touched upon. Three of the characters — Will, Lily Dale and Pete — appeared in The Orphans’ Home Cycle. Perhaps I would have felt more for them if I had had their earlier versions fresh in mind. Perhaps not. Director Michael Wilson (The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Incident at Vichy) has a sterling track record with Foote’s work, so I am puzzled why things did not come together better here. Van Broughton Ramsey’s (The Trip to Bountiful) costumes enhance the production greatly. On the other hand, Jeff Cowie’s (The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Incident at Vichy) set is problematic. In what is supposed to be a $200,000 (1950 dollars) home, the elegant living room has matching short stairs with no risers but pipe railings at either side of the room. It seems unlikely that a 1950 Houston house would be built around a central courtyard or that you would need to open a door to get from one wing to another, but that’s what we see. It’s just a symbol of the many ways this production misses the mark. The bottom line is that, no matter what the Pulitzer judges thought, this play is not top-drawer Foote. The brief catharsis at play’s end is too little reward for all that precedes it. Running time: two hours, 15 minutes.

The Trip to Bountiful **

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.)
The concept of this revival of Horton Foote's classic play, now in previews at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, is a puzzler. Although the four leading roles are played by black actors, the authority figures -- the ticket sellers and the sheriff -- are not. If the entire cast were black, that would make some sense to me. But the gimmicky casting raised distracting questions in my mind. Would the bus station and the buses in Texas have been integrated in 1953? Would blacks have owned farms and attended dances in Harrison, TX in the 1920's? Would a white sheriff have been so kind to a black woman? Wondering about these irrelevant matters might not have distracted me had other aspects of the production been more compelling. Even allowing for Foote's leisurely writing, the pace seemed sluggish. Cicely Tyson had some good moments, but occasionally swallowed her lines. Cuba Gooding Jr. was monotonously hangdog as her henpecked son and Vanessa Williams was relentlessly shrewish as his wife. Condola Rashad hit the right notes as Thelma and Tom Wopat was fine as the sheriff. Jeff Cowie's set for the family's cramped apartment didn't find a clever solution to differentiate the two rooms; his set for the final scene was quite lovely though. Van Broughton Ramsey's costumes seemed correct for the period. Michael Wilson, whose direction of other Foote plays has been so assured, seemed a bit off his stride here. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes including intermission.