Harrison, TX: Three Plays by Horton Foote

There is a quirky gentility about Horton Foote’s characters that builds and develops into universal truths. In Primary Stages’ production at 59E59 Theaters, Harrison,TX: Three Plays by Horton Foote: Blind Date, The One-Armed Man, and The Midnight Caller,each dramatically addresses the need for community, interaction, and understanding. Each play is set in Foote’s fictional community of Harrison, based on Wharton, TX, the town where he was born. The people and lifestyle of small-town Texas have always been in the fiber of Horton Foote’s life and writing about them earned him a Pulitzer Prize.

These three melancholy vignettes, directed with sensitivity by Pam MacKinnon (Broadway’s Clybourne Park), prove again that Foote’s stories are the tales of people everywhere. The places, years, and conventions may change, but the roots are deep. No one tells their stories as skillfully as Foote, and no one communicates the ethos of Foote’s characters as artfully as his daughter, Hallie Foote (Dividing the Estate). With her, a fine cast of nine performs various characters.

Blind Date, is the first one-act play, set in 1928. Hallie Foote plays Dolores, a social, loquacious matron, who is determined to set her visiting niece, Sarah Nancy (Andrea Lynn Green), on the proper road to charm, decorum and, of course, marriage. Dolores arranges blind dates, but Sarah Nancy is disinterested and blunt. Tonight, when out-going Felix (Evan Jongkeit) arrives, Sarah Nancy ignores and insults him. Meanwhile, Dolores’ husband, Robert (Devon Banner), impatiently calls for his supper while Dolores busies herself prompting stubborn Sarah Nancy on the do’s and don't’s of winning a suitor. The interaction between these characters with their individual demands is meticulously drawn with frustrations and humor.

The second play is darker. In The One-Armed Man, also set in 1928, self-aggrandizing C. W. Rowe (Jeremy Bobb) is a successful cotton merchant who arrogantly dictates to his accountant, Pinkey (Devon Abner), about spending limits. “Nub” McHenry (Alexander Condense), a former employee who lost his arm in a cotton-gin accident, shows up demanding that Rowe return his arm. The young man is unable to communicate his spiraling despair to his ex-boss. When Rowe offers him token cash, Nub draws out a gun and innocence, guilt, logic and illogic are thrust to a harsh collision.

The longest work is set in 1952, a vignette called, The Midnight Caller, taking place in Mrs. Crawford’s (Foote) boarding house. Persnickety Alma Jean Jordan (Mary Bacon) lives with typist, “Cutie” Spencer (Green) and Miss Rowena Douglas (Jayne Hardyshell), warm and appealing as a retired schoolteacher accepting what her life has become. When Mrs. Crawford announces that a man, divorced Ralph Johnson (Bobb), will be moving in, Alma Jean is offended, fearing her reputation will be tarnished. She is further outraged by a second new roomer, Helen Crews (Jenny Dare Pauline), who recently had a scandalous relationship with a rich, local drunk, Harvey Weeks (Candese), and was thrown out of her mother’s house.

Conflict reaches a peak as Harvey shows up drunk every night outside Mrs. Crawford’s house, wailing for Helen. The boarding house, like the whole town, is scandalized but after the problem is resolved, life in the boarding house continues as it was with Alma Jean, Cutie and Miss Rowena, and apparently how it will continue to be.

Marion Williams’ set remains the same for all the plays, conservative slipcovers and wallpaper, with some tweaking of the stair and door placements. Brief blackouts separate the plays. Kaye Voice’s costumes smoothly evoke the styles of both the ‘20’s and ‘50’s.

Led with deft subtlety by Pam McKinnon without an intermission, this quiet, small, Texas town poignantly conveys the comical and heartrending moments. Horton Foote has drawn each character with touching and meaningful insights of humanism.