The Orphans' Home Cycle Part III

GRADE: B+



By Horton Foote, Directed by Michael Wilson. At The Signature Theatre through May 8th

Horton Foote's The Orphans' Home Cycle comes to a close, and while every reviewer concedes the journey is worth it, some feel that the third part is most definitely the weakest. Which isn't the same as saying it's bad-- the lowest grade in this set is a B- -- but just that the final trilogy of plays in the cycle lacks focus and seems edited to the point of choppiness. Not everyone feels this way of course, David Cote at Time Out, Jonathan Mandell at The Faster Times, Erik Haagensen at Backstage and Melissa Rose Bernardo are all ecstatic. To put it another way, there's a real split in this crop of reviews. Reviewers who use covering the third part as a way of opining on the whole cycle heap praise on the entire undertaking, while those that consider the third part on its own are left feeling respectful, but hardly over-the-moon.

Backstage A+
(Erik Haagensen) Now that the end of the cycle has been reached, I'm happy to say that what I hoped for after seeing Part One is true: Foote's final gift to the stage is glorious, an essential American masterwork.

The Faster Times A+
(Jonathan Mandell) The characters soldier on through their sorrows without much fuss, just as the playwright depicts their everyday struggles with an engaging modesty and familiarity. It is an approach that contrasts so heavily with the explosive, excessive, confrontational dramas to which we have become accustomed (or deadened) that “The Orphans’ Home Cycle” almost seems like the invention of a new art form. Having now seen all nine plays in three evenings over the last month – plays that will be presented in three programs in repertory at the Signature Theater Company through the end of March — I can say that I have found it the most rewarding theatrical experience of the season and probably one of the most memorable in my life.

Time Out New York A
(David Cote) [Foote has taken] nine plays and resculpted them into something elevated and elemental, like Greek tragedy. It’s not that the final part of his trilogy, The Story of Family, includes any cathartic spasms of matricide and revenge, even if Horace Robedaux (Bill Heck) has stored up a lifetime of resentment toward his mother. I mean the action exists in a kind of suspended reality—not bound by the laws of time and faintly ritualistic. So fine-tuned is the ensemble’s acting, and so precise is Michael Wilson’s direction, this temporal strangeness only heightens the complex pleasures of Foote’s melancholy masterpiece.

Entertainment Weekly A
(Melissa Rose Bernardo)After nine hours of The Orphans' Home Cycle, it seems ungrateful to want more: There are, after all, nine plays and three productions on display at Off Broadway's Signature Theatre; director Michael Wilson and his 22-member cast have done remarkable work, imbuing Foote's epic piece with a delicate intimacy. Even though you can always go back to visit — parts 1–3 rotate in repertory through March 28 — it's hard to leave Home.

New York Daily News A-
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Superior acting, direction and design work — hallmarks of the first two segments of "The Orphans' Home Cycle" — are front and center in this final installment. But there are some gaps. "1918" suffers from being compressed to an hour, and having Hallie Foote, so singular in voice and manner, double as a different character is distracting. And the presence of Horton's long-absent mother, Corella (Annalee Jefferies), doesn't quite square with what's come before.

New Jersey Newsroom A-
(Michael Sommers) In editing these nine full-length plays to one-hour versions each, Foote — who died last March at the age of 92 — compressed time significantly to the point where occasionally the action seems oddly choppy. But for viewers who invest their affections in the characters, witnessing the engrossing arc of Horace's personal journey plus the sincere realism of the acting goes a long way to ease such bumps in the text. Truly giving an ensemble performance, some 20-some actors do beautifully by the many people of long-ago southeastern Texas. Maturing believably in sober looks and attitude, Bill Heck's deep-feeling Horace manfully shoulders his burdens. Maggie Lacey positively glows as ever-supportive Elizabeth. The one and only Hallie Foote (the playwright's daughter) not only nicely depicts mournful Mrs. Vaughn but in "Cousins" shines drolly as a nouveau-riche relation who reports her disappointment with Europe.

NY Post B+
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) Closure at last! With a total running time now up to nine hours, Horton Foote's "The Orphans' Home Cycle" finally draws to an end with the opening of its third and last three-act installment, "The Story of a Family." It's been a long, steady ride since the first one opened in November, and reaching the destination brings a fulfilling sense of completion.

Associated Press B+
(Michael Kuchwara) After already having spent six hours with the man, Horace has, by this third collection of one acts, become an old friend. He anchors Foote's intricately woven tapestry of life in fictional Harrison, Texas, during the first three decades of the 20th century.Part 3, which opened Tuesday at off-Broadway's Signature Theatre Company, is called "The Story of a Family," and is directed — like Parts 1 and 2 — by Michael Wilson with stunning clarity. Its themes are pretty much summed up by one of the characters in the evening's second act: "A family is a remarkable thing, isn't it? You belong. And then you don't. It passes you by, unless you start a family of your own."

New York Times B
(Ben Brantley) The three short dramas that make up “The Story of a Family,” which opened on Tuesday night, are both the starkest and most sentimental of this lovingly painted life-and-times portrait, directed by Michael Wilson in a co-production of the Hartford Stage and the Signature Theater Company...That organic balance between things great and small is less assured in “The Story of a Family” than it is in the two earlier groupings, “The Story of a Childhood” and “The Story of a Marriage.” All the plays had to be trimmed — each to roughly an hour — to make the cycle’s presentation possible. And given the steady stream of momentous occurrences in this last section, the telescoping effect can start to feel surreal, with birth, death, disgrace, departure and reunion all happening within absurdly brief stage time. You wish that the poor characters (and sometimes the poor audience) were given at least a chance to catch their breath between deaths.

TalkinBroadway B
(Matthew Murray) So, sadly, does Part 3 as a whole. If “Cousins” fixes the thematic point of the epic, neither it nor its companion plays ultimately contribute as much, as deeply, as those in the preceding two evenings. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t see Part 3 if you’ve already devoted six hours to Parts 1 and 2 - you should. Nor is it to say that Part 3 isn’t basically satisfying - it is. But the payoff is not quite the equal of the investment, and if Parts 1 and 2 spanned the quality gamut from “amazing” to “otherworldly,” Part 3 must content itself with a solid, earthly, qualifier-free “good.”

TheaterMania B-
(Dan Bacalzo) The final installment of what has been a remarkable theatrical achievement -- combining nine of the late playwright's works into one three-part epic that follows the life of Horace Robedaux (Bill Heck), a character based on Foote's own father. However, this last trio, subtitled The Story of a Family, is unevenly presented and only partially fulfills the promise of the material.

North Jersey B-
(Robert Feldberg) After the extraordinarily affecting "Part 2," which followed Horace's courtship of Elizabeth Vaughn (Maggie Lacey) and their marriage, "Part 3" turns out something of a disappointment, although still worthwhile for followers of the story. (All three of the evenings are being presented in repertory, so if you missed the first two parts, you'll be able to catch up.)

Village Voice B-
(Michael Feingold) What significance Foote means us to draw from Horace's story isn't always clear. Taken as a whole, the trilogy shows a steady slippage of focus. Full of group comings and goings that, in Michael Wilson's production, often look mechanical, Part 3 seems awash in the reiterated family data and town gossip that, in earlier segments, function as a dramatic contrast to Horace's embittered silence. Even the climax, in which he finally explodes at his insufficiently caring mother, is overshadowed by a secondary character's having a similar but showier explosion. Still, the work has enough substance to support its three-evening length, especially with performers like Pat Bowie, Annalee Jefferies, Maggie Lacey, and Pamela Payton-Wright to articulate it.

BS A+ 14; TFT A+ 14; TONY A 13; EW A 13; NYDN A- 12; NJNR A- 12; NYP B+ 11; AP B+ 11; NYT B 10; TB B 10; TM B- 9; NJ B- 9; VV B- 9; TOTAL: 147/13= 11.31 (B+)

Read On »

The Orphans' Home Cycle (Part II)

GRADE: A



By Horton Foote. Directed by Michael Wilson. At the Signature Theater Through March 27th

Bigger really is better Off-Broadway this holiday season. With reviews ranging from an ecstatic A+ to a respectful B, the second installment of Horton Foote's The Orphans' Home Cycle has opened to universal acclaim for its staging and its 22-person cast, particularly lead Bill Heck and Horton Foote's daughter, Hallie. The sole complaint (which comes up in several reviews) is that, in trying to edit the nine plays in the cycle down to an hour each, the pieces feel a bit truncated and abrupt.

NY Daily News A+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) The real reason Foote's drama is so big and important is because it's so exquisitely realized — the writing, acting, direction and design. So far, it's a home run for its presenters, the Signature Theatre Company and Hartford Stage.

The Faster Times A+
(Jonathan Mandell) The three plays of “The Story of A Marriage” — “The Widow Claire,” “Courtship,” and “Valentine’s Day” — are in their plain underplayed way so engaging, so moving, that at several moments it can be hard to avoid the embarrassing spectacle of quietly crying in your seat at the Peter Norton Space of the Signature Theater Company. Beware of such a moment, for example, in the speech where the normally taciturn Horace finally opens up, saying lines like “I am no orphan, but I think of myself as an orphan, belonging to no one but you.”... Something extraordinary.

Wall Street Journal A+
(Terry Teachout) The second part of The Orphans' Home Cycle, Horton Foote's family album of plays about a turn-of-the-century Texas family and its struggles with the coming of modernity, has just opened at Signature Theatre Company. It upholds the immeasurably bright promise of the first installment. Not since Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia" has so self-evidently significant a large-scale theatrical endeavor come to New York.

TalkinBroadway A+
(Matthew Murray) “Intense” is not a word typically associated with the plays of Horton Foote. But when discussing the second chapter of the Signature Theatre Company’s production of The Orphans’ Home Cycle, none other will do. It’s not just that “The Story of a Marriage,” as it’s delightfully, deceptively titled, is riveting, though it is. Nor is it that it’s leaps and bounds better than the first part of the trilogy, which was already one of the finest evenings of theatre New York had seen in 2009, though against all odds it is. It’s that Foote has captured so many searing emotions and instances of raw-rubbing truth that this gone-in-a-blink three-hour outing isn’t at all about its ostensible subject, the ever-seeking Horace Robedaux (Bill Heck). It’s all about you.

North Jersey A
(Robert Feldberg) There were affecting moments in the first three plays, as young Horace moved around among relatives without complaint, but the works were uneven, and, since the leading character was essentially acted upon, somewhat lacking in drama....The plays are superbly acted by a large cast, and have been directed by Michael Wilson with uncommon sensitivity.

NYPost A
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) Rarely has everyday life been so modestly inspiring as it is in Foote's hands. The worst part is that we have to wait another month to see how it all ends.

Backstage A
(Erik Haagensen) Horton Foote's epic nine-play cycle about early-20th-century life in the small fictional town of Harrison, Texas, continues on its winning way. The three plays making up Part Two follow Horace Robedaux into his early adulthood, marriage, and incipient fatherhood, and there's not a wasted moment in them. As with Part One, three hours fly by as this utterly engaging and deeply compelling work unfolds.

On Off Broadway A
(Matt Windman) The Signature Theatre's noteworthy production, which presents the nine plays over three evenings, features 22 actors playing over 70 roles. Directed with cinematic finesse by Michael Wilson, the epic effort displays the gentle playwright at his very best. When other playwrights abandoned traditional storytelling in the mid-20th century, Foote devoted his writing to detailed, complex characters from the viewpoint of his Texas hometown....The entire cast is superb, especially Bill Heck as the forlorn but resilient Horace. But it is the playwright's daughter Hallie Foote, often considered the foremost interpreter of his work, who truly stands out in a wide variety of roles.

NYTimes B+
(Ben Brantley) Directed by Michael Wilson with assured understatement, and acted by a consistently convincing and versatile repertory cast, these plays flow with a sense of everyday life accelerated, moving by us in a blur of dramatic happenings lodged in the fine grit of the ordinary. The stories swapped here include tales of madness, alcoholism, suicide and deaths in childbirth.

Associate Press B+
(Michael Kuchwara) Horace Robedaux continues his journey into adulthood in Part 2 of "The Orphans' Home Cycle," Horton Foote's masterful examination of one man's life in small-town Texas in the first decades of the 20th century.

Theatermania B+
(Dan Bacalzo) There are moments in the script, particularly in Valentine's Day, that teeter on the brink of sentimentality. But Foote wisely undercuts this with a dark sense of humor, as well as a lingering sadness that makes whatever joy the characters experience seem, at best, bittersweet. Foote also includes some odd non-sequiturs in his dialogue that relieves the tension in certain moments, and provides several laughs, as well.

New Jersey Newsroom B
(Michael Sommers) Having written the nine full-length dramas in this cycle at various times during his career, Foote had virtually completed adapting them into hour-long versions for this new three-part epic when he died last March at the age of 92. A lurking suspicion that Foote may have edited his work somewhat too sharply is confirmed by viewing this second group of plays. People abruptly go off to events and improbably return even faster. Gossipy tales are whittled to their essentials.

GRADES:NYDN A+ 14; TFT A+ 14; WSJ A+ 14; TB A+ 14; NYP A 13; NJ A 13; BS A 13; OOB A 13; NYT B+ 11; AP B+ 11; TM B+ 11; NJNR B 10; TOTAL: 151/12 =12.58 (A)

Read On »

The Orphans' Home Cycle (Part 1)

GRADE: A-

(photo by Gregory Constanzo)

By Horton Foote. Directed by Michael Wilson. Signature Theatre. Through Mar. 28.

In a bittersweet irony worthy of the playwright himself, Horton Foote is receiving possibly his warmest embrace less than a year after he died at 92, with the first installment (subtitled "The Story of a Childhood") in a nine-play epic of small-town Texas life. Most critics echo Ben Brantley's observation that Foote's plays, which individually can seem like well-turned miniatures, take on gratifying heft and scope when stacked together. Though a few critics knock the first play, Roots in a Parched Ground for being mostly expositional, and some others see the second play, Convicts, as an outlier (for better or worse), all but the Bergen Record's Robert Feldberg are thrilled with anticipation for the journey ahead, when Parts II and III open (Dec. 13 and Jan. 24, respectively). Most-used adjective for Michael Wilson's direction: cinematic.

Wall Street Journal A+
(Terry Teachout) It will, I suspect, be remembered as the most significant theatrical event of the season, the kind of show you tell your grandchildren you saw...Nothing much happens in "The Story of a Childhood"...nor do the characters have anything especially memorable to say. In place of studied eloquence, Foote offers us a Chekhov-like poetry of place and atmosphere, as homespun as a hand-me-down quilt. Yet this group portrait of small-town life, like "The Trip to Bountiful" before it, is neither comfortably nostalgic nor tiresomely bitter. Instead Foote shows us the world as it really is, subtly heightened by lyricism but always true to experience..."The Story of a Childhood" has the narrative sweep that you look for in major novels, coupled with the electric immediacy that only live theater can supply...Mr. Wilson, who also directed "Dividing the Estate," has staged "The Story of a Childhood" with supple, near-cinematic fluidity, moving from scene to scene so easily that you almost forget you're watching a play.

Backstage A+
(Erik Haagensen) By the time director Michael Wilson's bone-deep production of the first part of Horton Foote's "The Orphans' Home Cycle" is over, nearly three hours have passed in the blink of an eye. I wanted the second part to begin immediately...Foote based his work on the life of his father, which he learned of through numerous family stories told repeatedly to him in his youth. He certainly listened well: The writing is wise, deeply observant, and impressively detailed. Deceptively small-scaled and naturalistic, the work is really epic in scope, placing the lives of these modest people against the sweeping forces of social change and the vagaries of time. There is more genuine myth evoked in a single moment of Foote's simplicity than in all the self-consciously poetic strivings of the Public Theater's current "The Brother/Sister Plays." There's not a weak link in the 22-member company, which serves the writing beautifully under Wilson's piercingly clear-eyed direction...What we are being served here is nothing less than an American masterwork.

The New York Times A
(Ben Brantley) Promises to be the great adventure of this theater season...Directed with cinematic fluidity and novelistic detail by Michael Wilson, “The Story of a Childhood” leaves you as eager as a kid who has just started his first fat work of fiction by Charles Dickens, say, or Mark Twain, when putting down the book, even for an hour, feels like punishment...It’s a thrilling demonstration of an artist long regarded only as a miniaturist soaring into the realm of the epic...The exposition-heavy “Roots” is, on its own, the least interesting of the plays, but a necessary (and painless) initiation into the family trees that shade the cycle. “Convicts,” on the other hand, is a juicy slice of Lone Star gothic...The basis for a 1991 film starring Robert Duvall, “Convicts,” here acted by a uniformly excellent supporting cast, is the evening’s glorious and pathetic ghost story, in which people are doomed to haunt themselves...Anchored by geography and genealogy, Foote’s characters are nonetheless unmoored travelers in forever uncharted lands. That their creator has shaped them with such warm compassion and cold clarity makes us eager to accompany them on every step of an odyssey that is somehow as surprising as it is familiar.

Associated Press A
(Michael Kuchwara) An impressive introduction to Foote's three-part, nine-play marathon...Foote has a particular gift for time and place, expertly capturing the era and that area of southeast Texas where he grew up...While it may not seem as if there is an abundance of plot, Foote is quietly building a collection of finely etched characters. And director Michael Wilson has marshaled a fine cast to portray these people. There is an innate melancholy to Heck's performance, a sadness that suggests there will be enough material for several more evenings of drama...If Part 1 of "The Orphans' Home Cycle" is any indication, we are in for a remarkable journey.

Time Out NY A
(David Cote) Yes, these three one-act plays include leisurely strolls down memory lane, but there is so much life compressed here: greed, disease, murder, cruelty to children, the bitter legacy of slavery and a sad, ambivalent hero—Horace Robedaux, alienated observer of a family that abandoned him...As in most Foote plays, the terse, quietly suffering characters are caught between the past and the future, hoping to reinvent themselves but also ensnared by a dimly remembered past. Director Michael Wilson and his versatile, highly talented ensemble (including the radiant Hallie Foote, the late author’s daughter) wrestle their material into shape, delivering three hours of episodic narrative spanning 1902 to 1910 without a dull moment...Foote’s understated epic is an authentic American classic about the birth pangs of the 20th century. It’s told with humor, deep sadness and great writerly craft. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

The Faster Times A
(Jonathan Mandell) On the evidence of the three plays of Part I, I am already hooked...These first three hour-long plays, presented together under the title “The Story of A Childhood,” offer a committed cast of 21 actors in a splendidly fluid production that promises to turn Foote’s character studies (most of which had been produced previously) into a theatrical epic that recalls such past stage marathons as the Royal Shakespeare Theater’s Life and Adventure of Nicholas Nickleby or Robert Shenkkan’s The Kentucky Cycle–-all at a cost of just $20 per ticket.

Entertainment Weekly A-
(Melissa Rose Bernardo) There's much melancholy beauty to be found in The Story of a Childhood...No one is better equipped than director Michael Wilson to handle the delicate rhythms of this writer's work...The pace is appropriately, achingly languorous. Anyone not familiar with Foote's light-on-plot, heavy-on-character storytelling style — if it's important, it happens off stage, and we hear about it 10 different ways — might find themselves getting anxious. Foote's particular brand of poetry can seem old-fashioned, even simplistic. But with its tales of harsh times, social and economic change, Reconstruction, education, and industry in small-town America, The Story of a Childhood heralds the beginning of something extraordinary. And you'll be waiting with baited breath for Foote's next chapter.

Talkin' Broadway A-
(Matthew Murray) This could be the event of the season. But more than that, it could well become another grand theatrical epic, in line with O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra or Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia, but based on places, people, and feelings that don’t draw their inspiration from Greek tragedy or 19th-century European politics, but instead from the very fabric of America...As Horace’s story unfolds, the depth and insight of Foote’s milieu - and its potential when spread across the better part of three decades - reveal and distinguish themselves. The problems of Horace and his family, though small in the grand scheme of things, read large for the reason similar trials in Foote plays so often do: they intimately treat the experiences and fears with which we all grapple...“The Story of a Childhood” can often seem more like a promise than a delivery, background information for the more probing visions of the past to come. The first and third plays are captivating because of their devotion to family drama, but the second is a rocky digression that - at least at this point - seems necessary more for thematic than plot reasons...But don’t let that deter you...If the rest of The Orphans’ Home Cycle lives up to this first installment, it will be a true joy discovering the answer over the next few months.

Edge Boston A-
(Jonathan Leaf) I’d be very surprised if a hundred years hence it isn’t more and more fondly recalled than the first production of Eugene O’Neill’s torpid and pretentious epic, Strange Interlude, for instance - or even than Tony Kushner’s Angels in America...The faults of Foote’s vastly broad but utterly intimate study of life in rural Texas in the first decades of the last century are many, and they are abundantly on display...The performances of the actors, working under Hartford Stage director Michael Wilson, also vary widely in quality. But the strengths of both presentation and of the plays are very considerable. Foote has the humanity and the knowledge of people that lie at the essence of the important artist, and the comparisons made between Foote and Chekhov are hardly unjustified...In bringing the cycle to the stage, both Signature and Hartford Stage, as the joint producers, deserve our praise. For the production is both handsome and immense...Is this great theater? It is at least very, very good.

New York Post B+
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) Rarely has something so epic been so unassuming. A lot happens in Horton Foote's three-hour-long "The Story of a Childhood," set in the rough and tumble world of early 20th-century Texas. The tone never wavers from a certain humble plainness, even when scenes deal with jealousy and alcoholism or allude to tragic deaths...Few authors write pettiness as well as Foote does, and few actors play it as well as his own daughter Hallie, brilliant as always in relatively short parts. Granted, there are times when you wish the plays could be pricklier, messier. Doesn't anyone ever scream in this world? But then you realize that by not raising his voice, Foote gives his melancholy a subversive edge.

Bloomberg News B+
(John Simon) A magnificent cross-section of a great playwright’s career...Michael Wilson’s fluid staging helps to tie together three somewhat disparate acts. But what most justifies the three-hour duration, which includes two brief intermissions, is Foote’s uncanny ability to empathize with his characters, regardless of how marginal or unsympathetic they are.

Theatermania B+
(Dan Balcazo) An excellent start to this epic undertaking...The first piece on the bill, Roots in a Parched Ground, is the weakest, primarily because it is overladen with exposition...Things pick up considerably in the second play, Convicts, set on Christmas Eve, 1904. The teenage Horace has entered the workforce, clerking at a plantation store and occasionally watching over the African-American prison laborers who work the fields...The piece is also full of macabre humor and terrific supporting performances...The third play of the evening, Lily Dale, is set in Houston in 1910...The entire cast delivers nuanced performances, but the clear stand-out in this section is [Annalee] Jefferies...Wilson has directed the evening with a cinematic eye, aided by Jan Hartley's projections, the lush original music and sound design by John Gromada, and the sliding units from scenic designers Jeff Cowie and David M. Barber.

Village Voice B
(Michael Feingold) Remarkably bleak. Far from exploiting period nostalgia or sentimentality, Foote's account of Horace's childhood is an epic of negativity, in which expected kindness or decency constantly get withheld...In decades past, Foote's longer plays used to infuriate me: They seemed nothing but wall-to-wall recitation of family connections. His new distillation juxtaposes these thick blocks of chatter with the deadly silences of despair and isolation, making the family tree seem less a source of inheritors' pride than a set of mental handgrips to cling to against the void. Powerful as Foote's material is, it still contains static sections, particularly in the second half of "Convicts," where the expository motor seems to hum without moving anything forward; director Michael Wilson's cast sometimes adds to the hum by simply passing the data along rather than stamping it with any individual character. Many in the large cast do better than that, however, and Foote's legacy to his daughter, Hallie, now includes another of the showy, sharp-tongued roles she seizes with such vigor, as the skinflint plantation owner's nasty, drunken niece.

Bergen Record B
(Robert Feldberg) Anyone who's seen Foote's work knows that nothing terribly dramatic is said or done...The second play, "Convicts," the evening's weakest link, has 14-year-old Horace working at a plantation store in order to earn money for his father's headstone. It focuses, however, on the plantation's owner, Soll Gautier, a demented, violent, alcoholic old man who runs his spread with the aid of indentured convicts. Gautier, who takes a liking to Horace, is a nasty piece of work, and it's hard to figure out why he gets so much face time. Feeling and nuance return with "Lily Dale," as Horace, now 20, accepts his mother's invitation to visit her and Lily Dale in Houston for a week...You might anticipate that the succession of the three plays – or, at least, the first and third – would deepen our involvement with the earnest young hero. But that doesn't really happen. The main reason, I think, is that Horace is essentially an unchanging victim, a passive figure – it's hard to get a handle on his inner life — to whom bad things happen. The production has been nicely designed, and efficiently staged by Michael Wilson, but few of the performers – most of them playing multiple roles – give their characters much oomph.

Wall Street Journal A+ 14; Backstage A+ 14; The New York Times A 13; Associated Press A 13; Time Out NY A 13; Faster Times A 13; Entertainment Weekly A- 12; Talkin' Broadway A- 12; Edge Boston A- 12; NYPost B+ 11; BN B+ 11; Theatermania B+ 11; VV B 10; Bergen Record B 10; TOTAL: 169/14=12.07 (A-)

Read On »

Zooman and the Sign

GRADE: C+

By Charles Fuller, Directed by Stephen McKinley Henderson. At The Signature Theater. (CLOSED)

The Signature closes out its season-long exploration of the Negro Ensemble Company with Charles Fuller's award-winning drama about urban violence. The critics are at best respectful (even somewhat glowing) and at worst dismissive of either the script, the production or both. Even those who like the play feel that it's dated both in form and content in the age of The Wire, while critics are split on the production itself. Boosters feel that Stephen McKinley Henderson and his cast elevate the material with grace and nuance while haters (particularly Talking Broadway's Matthew Murray) think the whole thing is a big, deflated mess.

CurtainUp B+
(Paulanne Simmons) Zooman and the Sign takes place in Philadelphia in early August 1979. Though the country has changed in many ways since then, in many ways it hasn't. Lost sociopathic souls like Zooman still haunt certain neighborhoods and prey on the innocent. Zooman and the Sign offers no solutions to the endless cycle of problems that destroy young lives. But it certainly provides a powerfully revealing glimpse into a part of American life most would like to forget.

Associated Press B+
(Michael Kuchwara) The cast gives an emotional portrayal of the effect on ordinary people of inner-city violence... Fuller's play is still shocking for the parallels drawn between the supposedly decent, working-class neighbors and the wanton criminality of young gang members. Both groups feel a sense of futility about trying to change the way things are.

NY Daily News B+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Fuller's play is powerfully plain-spoken, if less than subtle. The challenge here is to maintain the right pitch, and under the direction of Stephen McKinley Henderson the nine actors in the cast up to the task. As Jinny's brother, Jamal Mallory-McCree's reserved performance stands out, while Lynda Gravatt adds welcomes flashes of humor as a no-nonsense family friend. Zooman and the Sign marks a worthwhile final entry in the Signature's season of works from the Negro Ensemble Company.

American Theater Web B
(Andry Propst) As Fuller couples these thematic elements of the play with the nearly overwhelming grief that plagues the family which already was in crisis because of Reuben's philandering, it's nearly impossible to not be touched by the play. Concurrently, there's a curious sense of datedness to "Zooman," which, though once crushingly immediate, has become less intensely timely as inner city violence has diminished. Nevertheless, the production, directed solidly by Stephen McKinley Henderson, features an array of splendidly observed performances, particularly from the actresses.

NYPost B-
(Frank Scheck) Zooman lacks the richness and depth of Fuller's A Soldier's Play, which followed a year later. But it still packs a punch. Stephen McKinley Henderson's staging could have been more atmospheric, but he's elicited fine performances from his ensemble.

Backstage B-
(Erik Haagensen) Under Stephen McKinley Henderson's fluid and sensitive direction, the cast delivers uniformly fine performances. Amari Cheatom creates an impressive Zooman, never once sacrificing the character's humanity in the pursuit of making him scary. Evan Parke commands the stage as Reuben, and Rosalyn Coleman negotiates Rachel's whirlwind of shifting emotions effortlessly. Ron Canada's Uncle Emmett is gruffly charming, and Lynda Gravatt is a force to be reckoned with as cousin Ash, particularly in her righteous pursuit of potato salad. Jamal Mallory-McCree as Victor makes his silences count and handles his one monologue beautifully.... There is much to admire in Zooman and the Sign, in particular an ending that manages to be emotionally complex and affecting despite the play's shortcomings. Unfortunately, it just makes you wonder how much more powerful that ending would be if what preceded it were better developed.

NYTimes C+
(Charles Isherwood) With his 1980 play Zooman, Mr. Fuller, whose best-known work is the taut military drama A Soldier’s Play, was addressing the scourge of urban violence that remains an intractable problem in American cities like Philadelphia, where this story is set in 1979. His approach is thoughtful and sincere, his understanding of the grim complexities of the situation admirable. But the play never quite disguises its roots as a theatrical response to a social problem.

Time Out New York C
(David Cote) Nearly 30 years later, does Zooman still scare us silly? Not enough, and that’s part of the problem with this earnestly restrained revival, the Signature Theatre Company’s final offering in its season devoted to works of the Negro Ensemble Company. Stephen McKinley Henderson stages it with care and lets the tension gradually accrue, but you wish he had used more shock tactics: louder music, perhaps, or a more in-your-face attitude. As psychotic street thug Zooman, Amari Cheatom cuts an appropriately cold-blooded figure, but it’s too easy to see the frightened teen under the streetwise bluff.

TheaterMania C-
(Patrick Lee) Time hasn't been particularly kind to Charles Fuller's Zooman and the Sign, currently being revived by the Signature Theatre as part of their season devoted to the Negro Ensemble Company. While its theme of community responsibility has not dated, the play seems torn from yesterday's headlines due to nearly three intervening decades in which stories from the 'hood have been mainstreamed. As directed by Stephen McKinley Henderson -- better known for his work as an actor in August Wilson's plays -- too much of the play simply lacks urgency and vitality.

Variety D
(Sam Thielman) Charles Fuller won a 1982 Pulitzer for "A Soldier's Play," but his 1980 domestic drama, Zooman and the Sign, is best considered grist for the mill. The Signature Theater has retained some interesting actors for its revival -- Rosalyn Coleman is particularly good as a bereaved mother -- but thesp-turned-helmer Stephen McKinley Henderson has added to the play's pacing problems with some deeply confused direction. In initial production and its previous revivals (in 1983 and 1994), the play was declared incendiary, if problematic and occasionally flat. Now, unfortunately, it's problematic, flat and no longer unique.

TalkinBroadway F+
(Matthew Murray) This final outing in Signature’s season-long tribute to the Negro Ensemble Company is weaker than the previous two, The First Breeze of Summer and Home, because those involved with it seem to trust it least. Director Stephen McKinley Henderson has assembled the play’s messy collage of pieces with a slapdash nonchalance that not only illuminates nothing new about the unforgiving text, but obscures what value it might once have contained.

CU B+ 11; AP B+ 11; NYDN B+ 11; ATW B 10; BS B- 9; NYP B- 9;NYT C+ 8; TONY C 7; TM C- 6; V D 4; TB F+ 2; TOTAL = 88 / 11 = 8 C+

Read On »

Home

GRADE: B+



By Samm-Art Williams. Directed by Ron OJ Pearson. At the Signature Theatre. Thru January 11th.

If we had to summarize the critical response to Home—Signature Theatre Co.'s second installment in their survey of the work of the Negro Ensemble Company—it would be respectful. Samm-Art Williams' play, which documents two decades in the life of a man named Cephus as he grows from teenager to imprisoned pacifist draft-dodger to a grown man, was nominated for the Tony for Best Play after running on Broadway for 250 performances. Reviewers are grateful to have it come back, but some note cobwebs of sentimentality here and there and a pat ending. Everyone loves the performances, particularly Kevin T. Carroll, who last wowed audiences (and me) at Signature in Seven Guitars.

CurtainUp A
(Simon Saltzman) The Signature Theatre Company could not have picked a sweeter play to be part of its season-long celebration of the historic Negro Ensemble Company. For the most part audiences at the Peter Norton Space will be delighted by the three terrific actors, playing more than twenty-five characters, who are bringing a joyful exuberance to Samm-Art Williams's nearly 30 year-old play.

Talkin' Broadway A-
(Matthew Murray) This is a work of symphonic scope capable of putting most current Broadway musicals to shame...the rhythm of Williams’s storytelling shimmers still, resounding even now with the piercing trebles, throbbing basses, and infectious drum beats of a tale that needs to be told: of achievement, of loss, and ultimately of redemption. Home unfolds as a quartet of movements, each adding new layers of melody and dissonance to this engaging, mini-epic chronicle of modern African-American evolution

The New York Times B+
(Charles Isherwood) Interspersed with the scenes and monologues are passages of lyric scene setting that pulse with the rhythms of jazz, blues and spirituals. All three performers are comfortably in tune with the musical cadences of this language. With Mr. Williams they conjure a portrait of black experience in the second half of the last century that finds a homey beauty not in suffering but in carrying on, waiting for the pain to pass and hoping for something better around the next corner.

Backstage B+
(Andy Propst) Lyrical, genuinely sentimental, and filled with a terrific social consciousness...Williams gives Cephus' tale a sepia-toned warmth and an emotionally harrowing coolness. Director Ron OJ Parson's sure-handed production navigates the play's dual tones and shifts in periods with ease on a handsomely evocative wood-slatted unit set from designer Shaun Motley.

AMNY B+
(Matt Windman) Though its original production transferred to Broadway in 1979 for a successful run, Home is rarely produced nowadays because it is so quaint and riddled with clichés. Luckily, Off-Broadway’s Signature Theatre Company, as part of its season-long tribute to the Negro Ensemble Company, has brought back “Home” in a surprisingly strong production.

Associated Press B+
(Michael Kuchwara) In 1980, Home made its way from the NEC to Broadway where it ran for more than 250 performances and was nominated for a best-play Tony. You can see why in this excellent Signature re-examination of the play, featuring a trio of accomplished actors, Kevin T. Carroll, January LaVoy and Tracey Bonner... A natural storyteller, Williams has a gift for creating memorable portraits, vivid pictures of specific people who meet Cephus on his travels to self-awareness and maturity.

Time Out NY B+
(Raven Snook) Samm-Art Williams’s 1979 Tony-nominated play about the trials and tribulations of a black everyman has its stale points—his wide-eyed awe at discovering his small North Carolina hometown has become integrated seems a bit quaint. But its optimistic where-the-heart-is message is just as moving as it must have been three decades ago...Home is funny, poignant and, yes, uplifting.

Bloomberg News B+
(Jeremy Gerard) Williams, an actor-turned-playwright, has two women play all of the roles except Cephus, allowing Tracy Bonner and January LaVoy plenty of opportunity to strut their stuff as children, farm girls, slick city women and hustling men; LaVoy also plays the ever-devoted Pattie Mae, and she’s enchanting. As Cephus, Kevin T. Carroll has youthfulness but doesn’t quite show the toll fortune has taken on him. Nevertheless, Parson keeps the energy level high throughout the nearly two intermissionless hours and the design team--Shaun Motley (set), Michael Chybowski (lighting) and Ilona Somogyi (costumes)--recreate the rough-hewn simplicity of the original show.

Theatermania B-
(Patrick Lee) The story's simple home-spun truths are weakened by a pat conclusion that also limits an emotional payoff. Cephus' almost miraculous twist of fate may be one with the play's world view, but it makes for anti-climactic drama. Still, even if the final destination of Home may disappoint, there's plenty of beauty in the journey.

Variety B-
(Peter Norton) Modern auds experiencing the new production -- beautifully designed by Shaun Motley -- may waver between genuinely liking the play and genuinely trying to like it, but Kevin T. Carroll's surefooted turn as the central troubled everyman will likely turn fence-sitters toward Home... there's not much to Home besides nostalgia... the best thing about Home is Carroll. This much unself-conscious sentiment has to be sold with utter sincerity and Carroll gives the play unshakable credibility right up to its final, tearful reunion.

CU A 13; TB A- 12; NYT B+ 11; AMNY b+ 11; Backstage B+ 11; AP B+ 11; TONY B+ 11; Bloomberg B+ 11; TM B- 9; Variety B- 9; TOTAL: 109/10= 10.9 (B+)

Read On »