Total Rating: 
***
Previews: 
July 30, 2013
Opened: 
September 12, 2013
Ended: 
October 20, 2013
Country: 
USA
State: 
New York
City: 
New York
Company/Producers: 
Signature Theater Company
Theater Type: 
off-Broadway
Theater: 
Pershing Square Signature Center - Irene Diamond Stage
Theater Address: 
480 West 42nd Street
Website: 
signaturetheatre.org
Running Time: 
2 hrs
Genre: 
Drama
Author: 
Horton Foote
Director: 
Michael Wilson
Choreographer: 
Peter Pucci
Review: 

It does not take much to throw Horton Foote's sparring troupe of Old Friends into a whole lot of crazy; they are halfway there anyway. In a full-stage premiere at the Signature Theater, The Old Friends, by the esteemed playwright, is a work that has been in progress for decades. Foote, who died at age 93 in 2009, wrote his first version 48 years ago and reworked it off and on over the following decades. Maybe he had his reasons for never producing it because The Old Friends, directed by Michael Wilson, is not on a par with Foote's works like Orphans' Home Cycle, The Trip to Bountiful or Dividing the Estate.

There is always plenty of compassionate delving into personal passions and emotions in Foote's plays where the setting is the rural world of Harrison, Texas. He understands the people and emerges with touching, even heartbreaking pictures. Foote's works capture vulnerabilities buried beneath blustering swagger or sudden strengths of character under layers of braggadocio. There are these moments of illumination of humanity in The Old Friends, as well, but like the oversized Texans, loud talk and pernicious tempers create an unsettling mood that is blaring and confusing rather than understated.

The first act is sluggish and it is difficult to identify the various characters, but even when the play begins to gel, it remains cumbersome to engage with them and their ambitions. Always, the booze is flowing as freely as the melodrama of brawling and manipulation among this bellicose gang.

The seven performers tackling this toxic cast are at their peak, led by Betty Buckley (Sunset Boulevard) as Gertrude Hayhurst Sylvester Ratliff with an in-your-face portrayal of the grand, drunken diva. In contrast to the brazen Gertrude is Hallie Foote as mournful Sybil Borden, who has been living for 30 years in Venezuela but now returns to Harrison. Her husband has just died, and Sybil is here to claim everything that should be hers, including an old love, Howard (Cotter Smith). The problem is that Howard is now Gertrude's paramour, and she is not about to give him up.

Foote, the playwright's daughter and main interpreter of his work, delivers, with arresting stillness, a fastidiously drawn picture of an unhappy woman watching the circus around her and planning her move.

Lois Smith has poignant moments as the matriarch, Mamie Borden, one of the few non-alcoholics on stage. She lives with her passive, resentful son-in-law, Albert Price (Adam LeFevre) and his wife, Julia, (Veanna Cox, flawless as the town's restless former beauty queen, evil with daggers of cruelty toward her husband).

The production has an effective 1965 look with David C. Woolard's costumes and Rui Rita's lighting for the set designed by Jeff Cowie and the blue curtain that sweeps across the stage between scenes. Michael Wilson keeps a rein on most of the action, and generous nods go to the performances. However, The Old Friends is not the finest example of Horton Foote's legendary sensitive look at the folks in Harrison, Texas.

Cast: 
Betty Buckley, Veanne Cox, Adam LeFevre, Hallie Foote, Sean Lyons, Novella Nelson, Nelle Powers, Cotter Smith, Lois Smith
Technical: 
Set: Jeff Cowie; Costumes: David C. Woolard; Lighting: Rui Rita; Composer: Keith Thomas; Original Music and Sound Direction: John Gromada; Wig & Hair Design: Paul Huntley; Dialect Coach: Gillian Lane-Plescia; Fight Director: Mark Olsen
Critic: 
Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed: 
September 2013