THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 9, 1995 TAG: 9503070061
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 17 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater review
SOURCE: MONTAGUE GAMMON III
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
Sentiment sells, and well done sentimentality, however simple, sells very well.
No one could call Horton Foote's play, ``The Trip to Bountiful,'' a work of high art, but it is certainly a carefully crafted tear-jerker. Given the authentic performances turned in by the Little Theatre of Norfolk cast, last Saturday's sold out house should not be unique.
The play draws on any number of standard plot lines and themes, some of which seem a little hoary with age. The author manages to include the conflict of generations, the endless cycle of man taming the land and the land reclaiming itself, the longing for ancestral homes, the nostalgia for the rural life that is swept away by urbanization, and a slew of other familiar motifs.
The elderly widow Mrs. Carrie Watts lives, in what might genteely be called limited circumstances, with her son and daughter-in-law in a three-room apartment in Houston. The year is 1954. Ludie Watts is some sort of low-paid office functionary, his wife Jessie Mae a devotee of movie magazines and beauty parlors. Carrie's habits of singing hymns to herself, her forgetfulness, and her very presence bring out the worst of Jessie Mae's mean spirits.
Carrie, whose health is failing, wants to return to her home town of Bountiful on the Texas coast. She has seen this nearly abandoned farming community only once in the 20 years since she sold the family land and brought Ludie to Houston so he could go to school. Ludie and Jessie Mae have forestalled her several attempts to run away, though it's never quite clear why they didn't let her go see the old ghost town and get it out of her system.
The first part of the play is devoted to depicting the Watts family's existence, and to Carrie's reminiscences. The second act follows her on her trip to Bountiful.
Betty Brigman gives a performance as Carrie that is genuinely moving and especially notable for taste and restraint. Foote's writing is ripe with invitations to overact. It would have been so easy to pull out all the stops and make this woman a maudlin, melodramatic character, destroying the sense that these are unremarkable folks confronting unremarkable troubles.
Brigman's role is quite different from anything she has played recently, and her acting suggests that her range has rarely been exploited to its fullest. She articulately carries off the long, determinedly lyrical monologues with which the play is heavily larded, and in dialogues convincingly defines the dynamics of her relationship with Ludie and Jessie Mae.
Leslie Draper also gives a particularly affecting performance as her son, and shows a side of his dramatic abilities that hasn't surfaced at the Little Theatre before. Ludie is a simple soul, whose defining words are ``There are a lot of things I don't understand.''
Draper projects a lost little boy quality that can stir sympathy without being pathetic, and he silently conveys the stoicism of those resigned to defeat.
Lauren Leah Ruehring turns in an exceptionally consistent, modulated performance as Jessie Mae. All these characters are drawn somewhat simply by the playwright, and Jessie Mae is the least sympathetic and least complex of the bunch. Ruehring is someone to watch for when she applies her obvious talents to more dimensioned characters.
Dina Mason appears in the second act as a young woman to whom Carrie addresses many of her speeches. She gives her role an easy sense of sincerity and compassion.
Sincerity and an unforced attention to detail are also the hallmarks of Kenneth Haller's performance as a sheriff. Al Aymer makes a similarly believable appearance as a bus ticket agent.
Victoria Blake directed ``Bountiful,'' and has delivered a set of performances unified in their focus and quality. by CNB