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'Bountiful' cast makes trip worthwhile
(by Herb Hammer - February 17, 2011)
THEATER, BY HERB HAMMER
'Bountiful' cast makes trip worthwhile
As years go by, it seems that most everyone wants to go home just one last time. Americans move around a lot. Chances are our fondest memories are the ones from the place where we grew up. That place is usually somewhere else.
Perhaps this alone makes Horton Foote's classic play "The Trip to Bountiful" so endearing.
Carrie Watts, now in ill health and approaching old age, longs to go home just one last time.
The Cleveland Play House is staging Mr. Foote's play with an alternative, mostly black cast, an idea that works so well you can hardly imagine the play performed by a white cast.
The Play House production gets mostly everything right, especially the casting of Lizan Mitchell as Carrie. She not only carries the play, she is the play.
Carrie lives with her son Howard and daughter-in-law Jessie Mae in a cramped Houston apartment. Carrie spends much of her time racing up and down the hallways, taking quick little steps that amuse more than most things in this sentimental play.
Carrie and Jessie Mae don't get along at all. Their only connection is Carrie's pension check and Jessie Mae's desperate need of the money which helps support the tiny family.
Carrie has often tried to escape by bus and train just to find her way home, a tiny dot not even on the map. Howard and Jessie Mae have always found her and brought her back, but not this time.
"The Trip to Bountiful" has had many adventures since its bare beginning as a 1953 television drama. There were a few ups and downs before Geraldine Page won an Oscar for the 1985 film version. It took nearly 20 years more before the play found praise on Broadway.
This version is far from perfect. Much of the play does all it can to keep from moving forward. A long bus ride with a newfound friend makes for a scene that lags. The scenes in the two bus stations, one in Houston and the other in a town near Bountiful, slow things down.
But you can't help but be drawn into Timothy Douglas' marvelously directed work.
Aside from Lizan Mitchell's electric portrayal of Carrie, Howard Overshown, as Howard, and Chinai Hardy, as Jessie Mae, give the play its extra life.
Horton Foote, who wrote over 60 plays, is best known for his masterful screenplay of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" and his Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Young Man From Atlanta." He also wrote the screenplay for his own Oscar winner, "Tender Mercies," in 1983.
The set by Tony Cisek in the play's final scene is a major letdown. As the story progresses, we can hardly wait to see Carrie's dilapidated home. We get very little of that. A full moon and decorative wall flats are all he has for us. A collapsing stairway and porch are just a hint of what Carrie found.
Ignoring the set is best, for the play, in spite of some foot dragging, is a dramatic success.
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