The Trip to Bountiful
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Cititour.com Review
"Crowd-pleasing" isn't a word often used to describe Horton Foote’s CV. And that’s actually not meant as a negative. His plays are delicate dissections of the quiet and frequently unfulfilled lives of the denizens of Harrison, Texas, his hometown, and they should be handled with care. While the current Broadway revival of his bittersweet 1953 play The Trip to Bountiful has been respectfully staged by director Michael Wilson and his mostly black cast, led by Cicely Tyson, it doesn't pack the kind of emotionally vigorous punch that it could.
The 79-year-old Tyson, returning to Broadway for the first time in 30 years, stars as Carrie Watts, a widow crammed into a tiny Houston apartment with her ineffectual son, Ludie (Cuba Gooding Jr.), and self-absorbed daughter-in-law, Jessie Mae (Vanessa Williams). Carrie pines to return to the pastoral confines of Bountiful, the farming community that she left behind when she moved to the city. To that end, she hides one of her pension checks from the grabby Jessie Mae and steals away on a bus, planning to stay with an old friend who remained in Bountiful.
Along the way she's befriended by a young woman (a luminous Condola Rashad), and their bonding leads to some of Trip's tenderest moments. Gooding and Williams ably depict the dysfunctional dynamic of their characters, Tyson's captures Carrie's longing and her fiery spirit, but none of the performances is entirely revelatory. In some ways Carrie doesn't get what she came for when she arrives at her destination, but in some ways she does, and that’s true of this production: Even if the production isn't as finely honed as it could have been, audiences have the chance to see an acting legend onstage in a primo role.
By Diane Snyder
Visit the Site
http://thetriptobountifulbroadway.com
Cast
Cicely Tyson, Cuba Gooding Jr., Vanessa Williams, Condola Rashad, Tom Wopat, Devon Abner, Curtis Billings, Pat Bowie, Leon Addison Brown, Arthur French, Susan Heyward, Bill Kux, Linda Powell, Charles Turner
Open/Close Dates
Opening 3/30/2013
Closing 10/9/2013
Box Office
212-239-6200
Theatre Info
Stephen Sondheim Theatre
124 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
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