Jenny Dare Paulin and Bill Heck
Photo by Gregory Costanzo

Horton Foote’s Orphan’s Home Cycle, now playing at the Peter Norton Space of the Signature Theater, co produced by the Hartford Stage, can offer a solace to those overburdened with the awkward and raucous comedy so popular today in television and film. The word that perhaps best describes Parts 1 & 2 of this trilogy is “melancholy.” But in this context, that can be a good thing, because Foote is connecting us to our own inner selves, the parts that have experienced loss, through heart-break, divorce, or even death, and we get to see how the ebbs and flows of life bring joy as well as sorrow.

Each of the three parts is three one-act plays covering the story of Horton Foote’s father. Part One (The Story of a Childhood) starts with the drama of 12 year-old Horace’s estranged parents: his father is near death and his mother is already dating and ready to remarry. We see the love and the narcissism that gets in the way of real affection being expressed. People have good intentions, whether it is the father’s brother or his best friends, who all mean to take care of the two children, but reading Greek or Latin, or business or other pressing matters just gets in the way. The mother’s new husband takes an unusually solicitous and even physical shine to Sister, but Horace is not allowed to live with his only remaining parent and ends up, in Act II, in virtual servitude on some god-forsaken ranch worked by convicts and with a mentally-ill owner, who turns out to have some strange familial connection to Horace in Part Two. But Act II was confusing, repetitious and annoying. Not much would be lost if it got cut all together. Act III picked up with a similar tone as Act I, with new heartaches for Horace, as he visits his mother and sister in Houston and is rejected once more when the step-father, Mr. Davenport, returns unexpectedly from a business trip. One marvels at the resilience of this tender and kind soul who keeps being thrown out and taken advantage of in Dickensonian proportions. Is there no one to speak up for his welfare? Because he’s the main character, we know he survives, but it is a wonder to behold in its melancholic splendor.

Part Two (The Story of a Marriage) continues with the undertone of melancholy, as Horace is now leaving for Houston and Business School in Act I. He’s smitten with the Widow Clair, who doesn’t seem to have any boundaries, not with her two children, who are indulged with candy and staying up until 4 AM, nor with her several suitors, her favorite of whom seems to be a sweet-talkin’ guy, who stays dangles marriage in order to get physical intimacies. Though Horace clearly loves her and she is stuck on him, she can’t seem to hold any decision longer than a few hours. He finally gives up when she tells him she will marry the boring but well-off salesman who also has been hanging around. A few years later, in Act II, Horace has a decent “traveling” job as salesman and now he’s in love with the lovely and more virginal Elizabeth Vaughn, whose wealthy father does everything he can to prevent either daughter from getting entangled in any relationship. Elizabeth must have inherited her father’s stubbornness, because she and Horace elope. It takes 10 months and one pregnancy for her parents to forgive, which they do in Act III, a comforting act counter pointed by the death of a close friend.

The other constants in these two plays, besides melancholy, are death, alcoholism, gambling, and betrayal. The characters seem to know that happiness cannot be sustained and they will sooner or later –and most likely be sooner—be visited by one of these. And yet they march forth. Horace loses his father through death, his mother through her remarriage (he even calls himself an orphan), one informal godfather and the crazy ranch boss through death, his sweetheart Clair through indecision, his in-laws through prejudice (though they do come around later), and the other informal godfather through suicide. There we find him at the end of Act III, still loving his wife and having hope for the future. Another underlying theme of this trilogy is resilience.

Even though Part One and Part Two are both three hours long and this reviewer watched them both in one day, the experience was strangely uplifting, considering all the downers in the plays. Time went by faster than expected. The pleasurable afternoon and evening were helped by the realistic sets by Jeff Cowe and David M. Barber, the sensitive lighting by Rui Rita and David C. Woolard’s costumes, which added depth to each character and situation. Each Part was started with an amazing series of gorgeously integrated projections, setting the tone for the inter-relationships of the various characters throughout the entire drama. The 22 actors were well-directed by Michael Wilson, who kept the plays moving along, despite a seemingly contradicting feeling of slow-moving scenes. All the actors performed well and most of them had multiple roles, giving us vastly different characters from one scene or part to the next. Standouts were Hallie Foote (the playwright’s daughter) as the crazy slut Asa and James DeMarse as Soll in Part One, Act II, the only redeeming qualities of that forgettable Act. DeMarse was also marvelous as the stubborn father Mr. Vaughn in Part Two, as was Maggie Lacey as the beautiful and resolute daughter Elizabeth, who ends up marrying Horace, admirably played by Bill Heck.

Much has been written about the paring down of Horton’s work, done by himself and his daughter, Hallie. And that was to get each of the trilogies to only three hours. The downside is that there are now a lot of short scenes and certain times it felt like watching a cuckoo clock go in and out as the sets kept changing. It would have been much better for some of those scenes to be either dropped entirely, or woven into others.

Still, Wilson’s production of these two (or more correctly six one-act) Horton Foote plays was gorgeous, entertaining and meaningful. If part Three is up to the same standard, this will have been nine hours deliciously spent.



The Signature Theater Company
The Peter Norton Space
555 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
(212) 244-7529