Horton Foote was a master of realism and of everyday existence. Devoted to the American South, Foote loved to reflect the voices of plain people living out the ordinary, jagged stories of their lives. Bethesda’s Quotidian Theatre is producing a moving version of one of Foote’s best-loved plays, “The Trip to Bountiful.”
‘The Trip to Bountiful’
Where: Quotidian Theatre, The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh St., Bethesda
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; through May 16
Info: $20-$25; 301-816-1023; quotidiantheatre.org
The play is set in 1947 in a cramped, three-room apartment in Houston. An elderly woman, Carrie Watts (Jane Squier Bruns), sits in a rocking chair past midnight, unable to sleep. Soon she is joined by her middle-aged son, Ludie (John Collins), who also can’t sleep.
The first scene establishes their close relationship. Ludie respectfully calls his mother “Ma’am” and is concerned about her being up so late. She gets him warm milk as she did when he was a boy. The relaxed atmosphere is broken only by noises from the nearby highway, where cars speed and honk their horns, and then by Ludie’s wife, Jessie Mae (Laura Russell), who enters scolding her mother-in-law and husband for not sleeping.
As Jessie Mae plays the radio loud enough to wake the neighbors, and complains about a missing recipe, about Carrie’s missing retirement check and about Carrie’s continual humming of hymns, it becomes clear that Jessie Mae is a selfish, controlling woman, in opposition to her sweet, considerate mother-in-law.
Carrie is understandably miserable. For her, there is only one solution: to return to Bountiful, the small Gulf Coast town where she grew up and raised her children, where she sat on her porch at night and smelled the sea breezes. When she expresses that desire to Ludie, he reminds her that they must remain in Houston where his work is. But to Carrie, flight — not only to Bountiful but also away from Jessie Mae — remains the only option. The remainder of the play is devoted to Carrie’s efforts to achieve her return to Bountiful.
Under Jack Sbarbori’s sure-handed direction, the details of Foote’s poetic script are completely realized. Not a line is rushed. Only Jessie Mae is in a hurry, to get her hair done or buy the latest movie magazine.
Bruns neatly articulates Carrie’s dilemma and her dream. She appears fragile and demure, but inside she’s a tiger. She doesn’t live in the past but she does cherish it. Collins plays Ludie as a dutiful, sensitive son. He does a balancing act as a husband; he’s not a coward but is unwilling to put his wife in her place. Foote drew Jessie Mae is a complex character, in part cruel, in part just foolish. Russell emphasizes her silliness. Samantha Merrick, Steve La Rocque and John Decker are excellent in smaller roles.
Sbarbori’s set perfectly evokes the Houston apartment: a wooden table and three chairs; old-fashioned, patterned wallpaper; free-standing screens. Two later sets are equally effective, suggesting Greyhound bus travel of old through a few details: a wall-mounted telephone, a calendar, a Coke sign. Stephanie Mumford’s costumes are marvelous period pieces, particularly her choices to illustrate Jessie Mae’s astonishingly bad taste.
There is a profound sense of closure at the end of this “Trip to Bountiful.” As Bruns plays it, Carrie achieves her epiphany. She sees her beloved redbirds and scissor-tails. She realizes that the place she grew up in no longer exists, but that she will never lose the dignity and strength that home gave her. In the final scene, Bruns’ Carrie is the essential Foote character: strong, resourceful and brimming over with sentiment, not sentimentality.
