Theatre in Review: The Trip to Bountiful (Stephen Sondheim Theatre)In a season packed with unnecessary revivals, The Trip to Bountiful seemed near the top of the list, given a 2005 Off Broadway staging that seemed as near to perfection as we were likely to get. But Cicely Tyson will have none of that: From the moment the lights come up on her, wrapped in a chenille robe, curled up in a rocking chair, and looking impossibly old, she is on a one-woman campaign to prove that we don't know the half of Carrie Watts, The Trip to Bountiful's indomitable heroine. And darn it if she doesn't have a point. As played by Lois Smith in 2005, Carrie was almost spectral, her eyes forever fixed on a distant landscape as she dwelled among memories no one else was left to recall. In contrast, Tyson is as busy as a bee, scurrying around the two-room Houston apartment she shares with her son, Ludie, and his wife, Jessie Mae, forever trying to keep useful and out of trouble. The latter proposition is pretty much impossible, as everything Carrie does -- singing hymns, running around the house, staying up all night -- drives Jessie Mae to distraction. The first two scenes of The Trip to Bountiful are as fine a depiction I know of what happens when incompatible family members are forced to live at close quarters. Listen to the way that Tyson's Carrie says, "Yes, ma'am" to each of Jessie Mae's rebukes; she sounds perfectly equable, but there's a hint of something else -- a note of rebellion, a contained fury -- hidden just under the surface. She's also a woman for whom conversation is air; having made her escape, she regales a traveling companion with the story of her life, and even the unhappiest detail, of which there are many, is related with Carrie's trademark vivacity. ("I'm a happy woman, young lady," she says, and who will doubt her?) Such is the infectious nature of her good will that, at the performance I attended, many in the audience joined in when she sang an old-time hymn. The result of Tyson's determinedly upbeat approach is at first deceptive, as it tilts the early scenes -- especially Carrie's deft way of hiding her pension check from prying eyes, or her audacious escape from Houston -- toward a robust comedy that initially seems more than this fragile play can bear. One of Horton Foote's finest works, The Trip to Bountiful is about Carrie's determination to get back to the little town on the Gulf Coast where once she was happy -- never mind that it is abandoned; the house she once lived in, a ruin; and the people she loved, dead or dispersed. As it happens, we're being set up by a master of her trade. When, alone in a bus station in the middle of nowhere, Carrie can't find the purse that contains all the money she has in the world, or when she gets bad news about the old friend she intends to visit, a remarkable transformation occurs: You see the hope drain out of her face, her body crumple with despair, and your heart quietly breaks. It certainly helps that The Trip to Bountiful is directed by Michael Wilson, the preeminent interpreter of Foote's plays, and that the production has been cast luxuriously, right down to the smallest speaking part. Cuba Gooding, Jr. has been given a bit of a rough time by the press, and for some it may be distracting that he occupies that stage with Devon Abner -- here playing a ticket agent -- whose Ludie in the 2005 production was an indelible portrait of quiet stoicism. But Gooding's approach -- he plays Ludie as a dutiful, middle-aged boy -- is appealing on its own terms, and he has a touching scene near the end, when he uncorks the bottled frustration he feels over the warfare in his household. ("It does no good to remember," he says, dejectedly, finally confessing that he, too, remembers the happiness they once shared at Bountiful.) Vanessa Williams takes the imperious, infinitely self-regarding Jessie Mae to the edge of caricature, but she also highlights her very real affection for Ludie and shows how the aimlessness of her life has infected her, making her something of a tyrant. (Fed up with having to chase Carrie across Texas, Jessie Mae, ever the martyr, wails, "I've had my fourth Coca-Cola just to keep my spirits up!") Also making lovely contributions are Condola Rashad as Thelma, the young military wife Carrie befriends on a Greyhound bus; Tom Wopat as a gruff, but kindly, sheriff who helps Carrie complete her journey; and Arthur French as an elderly station agent who keeps a watchful eye on Carrie in her greatest moment of need. It is surely thanks to Wilson that everyone has captured the gentle cadences of Foote's dialogue, in which idle, everyday pleasantries mask a multitude of unruly emotions. It's also true that staging The Trip to Bountiful in a Broadway house provides the space for the stunning coup de théâtre when Carrie finally arrives at her beloved Bountiful, and Jeff Cowie's set design -- heretofore a series of dark and/or cramped spaces -- dramatically expands to reveal a lovely grassy landscape, with a tumbledown house being slowly enveloped by flora, all lit by dawn's early light. Cowie's work is often marked by beautifully painted drops, and this one is no exception; his show curtain, depicting a bit of residential Houston in the early '50s, uses warm colors and carefully chosen details to set the tone even before the play begins. He also renders Ludie and Jessie Mae's cramped apartment against a towering landscape of windows, provides a sepia-toned Houston bus station (with the sign directing patrons to the white sitting room prominently on display), and places Carrie and Thelma's big scene in a cutaway portion of a Greyhound bus set against a magical night sky. Rui Rita's lighting captures, among other things, the precise quality of moonlight streaming in through an apartment window and a single incandescent bulb in an empty rural bus station. Van Broughton Ramsey's costumes are full of evocative period details, right down to the striped socks that Ludie puts on to go to work. John Gromada's sound design mixes his affecting original music with traffic sounds, birdsong, and popular music on the radio. Tyson has many other surprises hidden up the sleeve of her gingham dress, but I'll mention just one more. Even as The Trip to Bountiful reaches its forlorn climax, as Carrie realizes that "the need to belong to a family and a house and a town has left the world," the actress undergoes another remarkable transformation, appearing to grow noticeably younger and stronger. I have no idea how she pulls this off -- it's probably some form of witchcraft I don't want to know about -- and if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. Much inevitably has been made of the fact that The Trip to Bountiful has been cast mostly with African-American actors. If this approach doesn't yield any real insights, it provides the occasion for a memorable matchup between an actress and a part that she was born to play. The Trip to Bountiful played the same theatre -- then named the Henry Miller -- in 1953, where, even with Lillian Gish as Carrie, it ran only 38 performances. Like Carrie, it has finally returned, and it is likely to be a much happier homecoming.--David Barbour 
|
