BWW Reviews: Group Rep Offers Lovely Trip to Bountiful

The Trip to Bountiful
by Horton Foote
directed by Larry Eisenberg
Group rep
through March 6

In his lovely script The Trip to Bountiful Horton Foote engages our attention with his keen appraisal that "The world can't be bought". Believing the best things in life are free - well, almost..., elderly Carrie Watts (Gwen Van Dam) proves just how healing a return to one's roots, however brief, may be. Group rep utilizes a fine cast, achieving an overall excellent representation of Foote's rarely seen work.

Watts lives in Houston, Texas with her lackluster son Ludie (Kent Butler) and his lonely, frustrated and childless wife Jessie Mae (Gina Yates), who browbeats and dominates them both. Watts can no longer bear her empty life in the city and yearns to go back to her country roots to the tiny town of Bountiful. She runs away, like an innocent child. Her adventuresome journey is interrupted by Ludie and Jessie Mae, but not before she makes some life-affirming acquaintances. Along the way she meets and comforts Thelma (Liza de Weerd) and a kind sheriff (Patrick Skelton), who sees to it that she sets her sights on the decaying Bountiful.

The ensemble under Larry Eisenberg's mostly lucid and precise direction is terrific. Van Dam brings her special sensitivity and passion to the role of Carrie Watts and keeps her performance realistically restrained and within control. Yates as Jessie Mae is nothing short of outstanding. Despite her character's irritating selfishness, Yates makes the pain and sense of isolation shine through. Butler, Weerd and Skelton all have finely tuned moments and add richness to the plot's predictable situations. Stan Mazin, Henry Holden and Bert Emmett do just fine with lesser roles as bus station attendants. The cast does splendid team work between scenes converting Mark Macauley's simplistically fashioned and adaptable set pieces from city apartment to bus stations to Bountiful.

Eisenberg should slow down the final moment of Act II, as Carrie's exit from Bountiful happens much too quickly. What raises this Horton Foote piece above its predictability is the compassion of the characters and his lyric sense of time and place. Trips backwards are disappointing, but only if we expect too much. Carrie Watts's gentle acceptance of the inevitable, warmth and wise philosophy of living make it all worthwhile.