Sherman Playhouse Opens Horton Foote's DIVIDING THE ESTATE 9/19

On Friday, September 19, the curtain will rise on DIVIDING THE ESTATE, a Texas-sized comedy by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Horton Foote. The show begins at 8:00 p.m. for a four-week run.

In DIVIDING THE ESTATE, matriarch Stella Gordon is determined not to divide her 100-year-old Texas property, despite her family's declining wealth and the looming financial crisis of the late 1980s. But her three children have another plan. Old resentments and sibling rivalries surface as the members of this hilariously dysfunctional family go head-to-head to see who might claim the biggest piece of the pie.

"The events in DIVIDING THE ESTATE are a universal experience," said director Katherine Almquist of Sharon. "Weddings and funerals are a good start in cementing or tearing up relationships, but there is nothing like a reading of the will to bring out the best and the worst in anyone."

"[Playwright] Horton Foote just parts the curtains and let's you see," said producer David Almquist, the director's husband, also of Sharon. "The earth does not shake, no one is carted off to an insane asylum, and no one is assassinated. It is about a family who, underneath it all, love each other and cope the best way they know how, which is just basically by bumbling through...this, in turn, is where the laughs come out over and over again."

The production features some of the region's best actors: Leo Paul (Litchfield), Julian Thomas (New York City), Ellen Burnett (Sherman), Christine Amorin (Bethel), Kimberly Marcus and Brian Feinberg (both Danbury), and Erin Shaughnessy, Jackie Decho Holm, Lorina Milay, Phair Haldin, Beth Bonnabeau, James Hipp, and Josephine Harding (all New Milford).

Besides Mr. and Mrs. Almquist, the show's crew includes lighting and set designer Al Chiapetta, sound designers David White and Robin Frome, and stage manager Jeff Rossman.

DIVIDING THE ESTATE first premiered at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ, in 1989. The play received a popular revival Off-Broadway in 2007, then subsequently opened on Broadway at the Booth Theatre on October 23, 2008. The play then received two Tony Award nominations, while Horton Foote won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play and the Obie Award for Playwriting. The New York Daily News said the show "goes for laughs and succeeds, and at the same time comments on more sweeping notions of avarice, entitlement and carpetbagging karma...Foote's fine play does go down easy."

DIVIDING THE ESTATE runs September 19,20 26,27,28 October 3,4 10,11,12. Curtain time is 8:00 p.m.Fridays & Saturdays, with 2:00 p.m. Sunday matinees on September 28 and October 12. Tickets for all shows are $20 for general seating.

On Thursday, September 18, all patrons are invited to attend a "Half-Price Preview Night" at 8:00 p.m. where all tickets are only $10. Students may see any performance for only $10 if they pay in cash only at the door and carry a valid student ID. Students may not make reservations in advance for a performance.

Reservations can be made online at shermanplayers.org or by calling the box office at (860) 354-3622. The Sherman Playhouse is a non-Equity theatre company located at 5 Route 39 North (next to the firehouse) in Sherman,CT