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MAGGIE LACY as Elizabeth Vaughn and Bill Heck as Horace Robedaux dance in "The Orphans' Home Cycle" at Hartford Stage. Part One runs through Oct. 16. Tickets are $38 to $71 with discounts available. Information: 860-527-5151 and www.hartfordstage.com. (RICK HARTFORD, HARTFORD COURANT / August 25, 2009) |
'A family is a remarkable thing. You belong. And then you don't. It passes you by. Unless you start a family of your own," says Minnie, a spinster schoolteacher, midway through "The Story of a Family," which concludes Horton Foote's "The Orphans' Home Cycle," in its trilogy form at Hartford Stage.
Minnie's rueful observation comes after admitting dislike for all but two of her few living relations, one of whom is cousin Horace Robedaux; and she omits mention of the troubles common to most families, from which she is now nearly immune. Yet fresh or recurring woes and rubs afflicting the kith and kin of the Robedaux, Vaughn and Thornton clans are keeping apace with the march of time.
So processing on foot, a slow, snaking line of black-clad mourners, some dropping small floral tributes and all bearing umbrellas unfurled against a curtain of spilling water, creates the riveting tableau that opens the last chapters of Foote's saga.
It begins with the 1918 influenza pandemic and the announcement of armistice, and ends 10 years later, with Horace's rise as the family patriarch following the death of his father-in-law, Mr. Vaughn.
The late playwright, with director Michael Wilson, could not have foreseen how contemporary events, to large and small degrees, echo the tribulations affecting Foote's characters: the re-emergence of H1N1 "swine" flu, an erosion of consumer buying power, even headline news of abuses of an estate and inheritance.
But the main refrains are Foote's alternately tragic and comic riffs on Tolstoy's famous opening to "Anna Karenina": "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." And "The Story of a Family" introduces new cousins and townspeople while we revisit familiar characters.
As time marches on, some folks — such as Horace's self-centered sister Lily Dale and his wife Elizabeth's ne'er-do-well brother, known as "Brother" Vaughn — never change. Or, rather, they harden into immutable form, due to excessive cosseting well into adulthood by doting parents. And misdeeds by the profligate Brother in particular pall Horace and Elizabeth's happiness, though not through his agency alone.
For instance, Mr. Vaughn thinks "it's the least" he can do for his country by offering to take care of his married daughter and her infant and pack son-in-law Horace off to World War I with Brother, who has flunked out of college and worse.
"Oh, why in the world does Papa always have to interfere?," exclaims Elizabeth to Horace. "Well, you're just going to have to tell him you don't want to go."
But Mr. Vaughn's perverse notion of sacrifice and grandiosity is so fixed that he brings it up again when Horace comes to after nearly dying from the flu. (These moments elicit derisive laughter from the audience.) Never mind that family men are not required to enlist, nor the couple's grief over losing their child to the flu.
And Horace's mother, Corella, has run into cousin Minnie at the lady's room of a Houston department store. Minnie has not forgiven Corella for leaving her boy when she remarried 25 years ago. Days later, in a hospital bed before an emergency operation, she tells Horace of the encounter. Clasping his hand, she acknowledges his struggle to find his way in the world and tearfully asks, "Do you hate me, son?"
Throughout "The Story of a Family," poor Horace is put upon by family.
Upstanding, hardworking, and averse to making risky investments, family members and cousins make digs at his caution. And near the end of the story, the widowed Mrs. Vaughn, whose son is squandering the farms that support them, pleadingly asks Horace for advice.
"I don't know," he replies. "I only know when I got into trouble there was no one I could turn to to help me out."
That statement contains opposing aspects of his nature: resentment toward those who have wasted opportunities, and his hesitancy to pass judgment without walking in another's shoes.
Although he is slow to boil, Horace uncharacteristically uncorks his steam and directs it at his mother near the saga's end. It's partially a defense of his son, who is exceptionally fond of reading, a pastime Corella disdains.
That boy who often has his nose in a book is the young playwright himself.
•THE ORPHANS' HOME CYCLE runs through Oct. 24 at Hartford Stage, 50 Church Street, Hartford. There are opportunities to see the complete trilogy. For a performance calendar, visit www.hartfordstage.org. Tickets are $38 to $71. Information: 860-527-5151 or www.hartfordstage.com.
Minnie's rueful observation comes after admitting dislike for all but two of her few living relations, one of whom is cousin Horace Robedaux; and she omits mention of the troubles common to most families, from which she is now nearly immune. Yet fresh or recurring woes and rubs afflicting the kith and kin of the Robedaux, Vaughn and Thornton clans are keeping apace with the march of time.
So processing on foot, a slow, snaking line of black-clad mourners, some dropping small floral tributes and all bearing umbrellas unfurled against a curtain of spilling water, creates the riveting tableau that opens the last chapters of Foote's saga.
It begins with the 1918 influenza pandemic and the announcement of armistice, and ends 10 years later, with Horace's rise as the family patriarch following the death of his father-in-law, Mr. Vaughn.
The late playwright, with director Michael Wilson, could not have foreseen how contemporary events, to large and small degrees, echo the tribulations affecting Foote's characters: the re-emergence of H1N1 "swine" flu, an erosion of consumer buying power, even headline news of abuses of an estate and inheritance.
But the main refrains are Foote's alternately tragic and comic riffs on Tolstoy's famous opening to "Anna Karenina": "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." And "The Story of a Family" introduces new cousins and townspeople while we revisit familiar characters.
As time marches on, some folks — such as Horace's self-centered sister Lily Dale and his wife Elizabeth's ne'er-do-well brother, known as "Brother" Vaughn — never change. Or, rather, they harden into immutable form, due to excessive cosseting well into adulthood by doting parents. And misdeeds by the profligate Brother in particular pall Horace and Elizabeth's happiness, though not through his agency alone.
For instance, Mr. Vaughn thinks "it's the least" he can do for his country by offering to take care of his married daughter and her infant and pack son-in-law Horace off to World War I with Brother, who has flunked out of college and worse.
"Oh, why in the world does Papa always have to interfere?," exclaims Elizabeth to Horace. "Well, you're just going to have to tell him you don't want to go."
But Mr. Vaughn's perverse notion of sacrifice and grandiosity is so fixed that he brings it up again when Horace comes to after nearly dying from the flu. (These moments elicit derisive laughter from the audience.) Never mind that family men are not required to enlist, nor the couple's grief over losing their child to the flu.
And Horace's mother, Corella, has run into cousin Minnie at the lady's room of a Houston department store. Minnie has not forgiven Corella for leaving her boy when she remarried 25 years ago. Days later, in a hospital bed before an emergency operation, she tells Horace of the encounter. Clasping his hand, she acknowledges his struggle to find his way in the world and tearfully asks, "Do you hate me, son?"
Throughout "The Story of a Family," poor Horace is put upon by family.
Upstanding, hardworking, and averse to making risky investments, family members and cousins make digs at his caution. And near the end of the story, the widowed Mrs. Vaughn, whose son is squandering the farms that support them, pleadingly asks Horace for advice.
"I don't know," he replies. "I only know when I got into trouble there was no one I could turn to to help me out."
That statement contains opposing aspects of his nature: resentment toward those who have wasted opportunities, and his hesitancy to pass judgment without walking in another's shoes.
Although he is slow to boil, Horace uncharacteristically uncorks his steam and directs it at his mother near the saga's end. It's partially a defense of his son, who is exceptionally fond of reading, a pastime Corella disdains.
That boy who often has his nose in a book is the young playwright himself.
•THE ORPHANS' HOME CYCLE runs through Oct. 24 at Hartford Stage, 50 Church Street, Hartford. There are opportunities to see the complete trilogy. For a performance calendar, visit www.hartfordstage.org. Tickets are $38 to $71. Information: 860-527-5151 or www.hartfordstage.com.