“The need to have a home and family is gone from most of the world,” mourns the central character in The Trip to Bountiful. She’s Carrie Watts, whose blissful childhood in a Texas farm town (its name deriving from the bounty of its crops) gave way to a loveless marriage and then to a gloomy existence as the resented mother-in-law in the cramped Houston apartment of her son and his vain, shrewish wife.
Horton Foote’s play is set in 1953, the year of its original broadcast as a television drama. It subsequently went to Broadway and in the ’80s became a film that won a Best Actress Oscar for Geraldine Page. It’s a sweet, low-key piece, written in broad character strokes and with an ear attuned to the lazy twang of the Gulf Coast.
Carrie has insomnia, heart disease, and nothing to live for but memories. Her only wish is to see her hometown one last time. The play traces Carrie’s flight from an unhappy present to a fondly recollected past. But the town is no longer bountiful. The soil is depleted, the people have moved away, and Bountiful has become a ghost town.
But she’s determined to go, and by God, you root for her anyway. Her daughter-in-law Jesse Mae is so self-centered and cruel, her son Ludie so overprotective—not to mention henpecked—that Carrie’s escape seems poignantly heroic.
Thespis Theatre Company, a Vermont-based community troupe, fills the tiny stage in Putney’s Sandglass Theater with humor and heartache. Larry K. Bramble’s sensitive production brings together several accomplished veterans of the Actors Theatre Playhouse in neighboring New Hampshire.
With piercing black eyes in a soft, expressive face, Nancy Stephens radiates the stubborn defiance that revives Carrie’s sagging spirits and failing strength. Jim Bombicino makes the spineless Ludie sympathetic, Nan Mann is delightfully malicious as Ludie’s unrelentingly hateful wife, and an effective supporting cast populates Carrie’s homeward journey.
The Trip to Bountiful: March 12-14 and 19-21, Sandglass Theater, 17 Kimball Hill, Putney, (802) 387-4314.
Not as Far North
Last fall, Valley performers Jeannine Haas and Julie Waggoner revived the 1980s feminist sketch-comedy show Parallel Lives, known as “The Kathy and Mo Show” after the pair who originated it. The Haas and Waggoner show, performed in Ashfield’s Congregational Church, was a howling hit (this theatergoer almost fell out of his pew laughing) and the return engagement over the next three weekends looks to be an even hotter ticket.
This time, they’re doing it as dinner theater in Elmer’s, the grocery-cum-restaurant that is the hub of Ashfield’s meeting and eating scene. You can also see the show without the dinner, if you can get in. To make the evening affordable, even romantic, childcare is available at the nearby Inn at Norton Hill. As Haas puts it, “Dinner, a show, and childcare—all for less than it costs to park in New York.”
Parallel Lives: March 12-13, 19-20, 26-27, Elmer’s Store, 396 Main St., Ashfield, (413) 628-4003 for reservations (required), PaulineLive.com for more info.
