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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > December > 01 > Entry
Review: ‘The Trip to Bountiful’
There’s a lot to be said for putting down roots — stability, growth, a sense of community. And in Texas farm country, where a family’s history is tied to the land, uprooting can be nigh impossible.
Horton Foote was a Texas playwright who understood people’s attachment to the place they call home. And while home may be where the heart is, Austin Playhouse’s current production of “The Trip to Bountiful” showing now through Dec. 1, demonstrates that the heart doesn’t always travel well.
“Bountiful” revolves around Carrie “Mother” Watts (Mary Agen Cox), an aging pensioner living with her son and daughter-in-law in a small apartment in 1950s Houston. The close quarters are driving everyone crazy, and Carrie’s heart is cause for concern.
Carrie knows the end is near, and she desperately wants to get back to her home-town of Bountiful, Texas, before she dies. But her well-meaning son, Ludie (Brian Coughlin), and his shrewish wife, Jessie Mae (Amy Kay Raymond), think they know what’s best - and that involves staying put.
Though written well before Lifetime movies became popular, “Trip to Bountiful” is propelled more by emotions than actions. Mary Agen Cox carries the show, guilelessly inducing our compassion. Her touching performance is likely to leave even the coldest heart at least a little ferklempt.
Henpecked and struggling with defeat, Brian Coughlin gives a solid performance as Ludie — struggling to stifle his emotions with true 1950s machismo. However, director Don Toner made an odd casting choice here since Coughlin’s burly frame belies the debilitating illness Ludie suffers prior to the opening of the play.
Even the small details (like the wrong build for one character or too much blush on another) can have a significant impact on a play. Costume designer Buffy Manners’ choices were largely appropriate, but Amy Kay Raymond’s over-sized and anachronistic shoes stick out like a sore thumb — both distracting from and impeding Raymond’s performance as she clunks around for half the play.
Raymond’s portrayal of Ludie’s wife, Jessie Mae, makes it crystal clear why Carrie needs to get out of the house. The performance is flat, making the barren housewife into a callous and self-absorbed harridan. Jessie Mae treats her mother-in-law like the child she doesn’t have, and the script offers more opportunity for sympathy than Raymond manages to garner.
But we do care about Carrie, and so “The Trip to Bountiful” is ultimately a tender play with a bittersweet ending that will touch your heart without warming it.
8 p.m. Thursdays - Saturdays at 8pm, 5 p.m. Sundays through December 18. Austin Playhouse, Penn Field, 3601 S. Congress Ave. $26-$28. www.austinplayhouse.com
Cate Blouke is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Comments
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By DSS
December 9, 2010 8:56 AM | Link to this
I must mention the “Trip to Boutiful” movie from 1985 starring Geraldine Page. If you like this play, you should watch the movie. Geraldine Page is wonderful, as always! I also found it was first a TV play in 1953 on NBC. A great story that should continue to be retold!
By T. S. Elephant
December 5, 2010 6:58 PM | Link to this
I thought Coughlin and Raymond each brought interest. Ludie, a farm boy, is himself out of place in an office job and an urban world. Jessie Mae, as played here, is a deluded Olive Oyl whose pretensions make selfishness look insane. She brings a wackiness that possibly offers the other primary characters something to draw strength from once the audience is a bit off balance.