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Opined January 2, 2006
THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL by 1994/95 Playwright-in-Residence Horton Foote, Directed by Harris Yulin
With Devon Abner, Meghan Andrews, Jim Demarse, Hallie Foote, Frank Girardeau, Gene Jones, Sam Kitchin
and Lois Smith
Signature Theatre Company's 15th Anniversary programming and $15 ticket-pricing initiative is made possible
by the lead sponsorship of Time Warner.
Extended! Six additional weeks! Now through February 19, 2006
I am living in a parallel universe. I accept that now. It is the only explanation for what I saw and what everyone else saw.
The gushing reviews for this show would have you think of nothing but the soulful blue eyes of Ms Smith and her
luminous performance and that she walks on water. Hallie Foote has never been better. Harris Yulin is a gifted director.
They are for a different production altogether.
At best this is a difficult play because so little “happens”. A widow lives with her son and daughter-in-law in a one-
bedroom apartment in Houston, early 1950’s. Times are iffy, and her pension check is helpful in making ends meet. Her
son is recently returned to work after an extended illness, and her daughter-in-law seems to have nothing on her mind other
than drinking Coke at the drugstore, getting her hair done and shopping.
The widow wants to go back to her old farm in Bountiful. She is obsessed with the idea to the point of being a little
addled. Over the course of the play she goes from wanting to live there and work the land again to being satisfied to see it
once more before she dies. She has tried to run away before and has always been stopped. This time she makes it and
disrupts her family’s life as they chase her down.
Part of the problem, which I discovered at the talk-back, is that the play has been cut. So we don’t find out about the son’
s illness and we don’t see some poignant moments back at the homestead in Bountiful. Ms. Foote said that her father
thinks this is a better version, which may be because he is so familiar with the story that he doesn’t need the details. (Like
the parents who take their kids to see Goodnight and Good Luck. The kids see a guy taking on a Senator. The parents see
a man changing the world.)
The other problem is that the acting, with the exception of Meghan Andrews, is uniformly shallow. As the son and
daughter-in-law, Mr. Avner and Ms Foote deliver their lines as if they were running them in a technical rehearsal where
there is no audience and all the actors want to do is make certain they know their lines, entrances, exits and actions. And
Lois Smith brings new meaning to the terms “mugging” and “dramatic pause.” Her blue eyes are luminous because we
spend a lot of time looking at them while we wait for her to speak. I could have packed a bag and walked to Bountiful
myself in one of her pauses. But the show had no intermission, and I am an usher. So on it went and stay I did – in
whatever dimension that was.