THE ORPHANS' HOME CYCLE, PART 1: THE STORY OF A CHILDHOOD, the first part of the world premiere three part theatrical event by the Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award-winning playwright Horton Foote, opened last night at Signature Theatre Company at the Peter Norton Space, 555 West 42nd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues - and the critics are cheering!
THE ORPHANS' HOME CYCLE is co-produced by Signature Theatre Company (James Houghton, Founding Artistic Director; Erika Mallin, Executive Director) and Hartford Stage (Michael Wilson, Artistic Director; Michael Stotts, Managing Director). Wilson directs a 22-member company in the historic, sweeping work.
THE ORPHANS' HOME CYCLE plays through March 28, 2010 at Signature Theatre Company. PART 2: THE STORY OF A MARRIAGE begins performances on December 3 and opens December 13, with PART 3: THE STORY OF A FAMILY beginning previews January 7 in advance of a January 24 opening.
Here's a sample of what the critics had to say about THE ORPHANS' HOME CYCLE, PART 1: THE STORY OF A CHILDHOOD:
Heart of a Small Town, Vast in its Loneliness
Ben Brantley, NEW YORK TIMES
"Two fresh-faced fishermen, wearing solemn expressions and suspenders, sit on a riverbank, looking as if they were waiting for Norman Rockwell to show up with his easel. "You're on your own now," one of them says.
"I'm on my own," the other answers, staring straight ahead. He is 12, and his father has just died. He is not kidding. He is also absolutely right.
This sun-clouding moment of perception, in which an all-American idyll takes on a mortal chill, occurs in the opening chapter of what promises to be the great adventure of this theater season: the New York premiere of "The Orphans' Home Cycle," Horton Foote's heart-piercing, nine-play family album about growing up lonely in Texas in the early 20th century. The boy who sees his future with so little mercy one afternoon in 1902 is named Horace Robedaux. And though he is hardly what you would call a happy lad, he is unusually honest, and I think you're going to want to spend as much time in his company as you can.
That means sitting for roughly nine hours at the Peter Norton Space of the Signature Theater Company, where the three three-play installments of the cycle will be playing during the next four months. But on the basis of the first part, which opened on Thursday night under the umbrella title "The Story of a Childhood," nine hours may not feel like enough.
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. Written in the 1970s by Foote, the theater's great chronicler of existential sadness in small-town America, "The Orphans' Home Cycle" has never before been produced as a whole, though most of its plays have been seen separately in stage or screen versions. Foote was editing and revising them for this production, which originated at the Hartford Stage, when he died in March at 92. And as interpreted by Mr. Wilson, the first part of this tale of a life based on that of Foote's father isn't a stately memorial to an eminent dramatist; it's a thrilling demonstration of an artist long regarded only as a miniaturist soaring into the realm of the epic."
Click here to read the entire review:
http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/theater/reviews/20orphan.html?ref=theater
Horton Foote Chronicles a Man's Search for Identity
Michael Kuchwara, ASSOCIATED PRESS
"Don't be fooled by the deceptively gentle way Part 1 of Horton Foote's extraordinary "Orphans' Home Cycle" initially unfolds.
Twenty-year-old Horace Robedaux is on a train heading to Houston from Harrison, Texas, the epicenter of many of the playwright's best works. Horace is traveling to visit his mother, sister and stepfather for what turns out to be a troubling reunion.
But make no mistake. Part 1, which the Signature Theatre Company has opened off-Broadway at its Peter Norton Space, is not standard family soap opera. It's an impressive introduction to Foote's three-part, nine-play marathon. The other parts will arrive later in the season, although all three already have had a critically acclaimed run at Connecticut's Hartford Stage, which is co-producing this mammoth project.
If Part 1 of "The Orphans' Home Cycle" is any indication, we are in for a remarkable journey. It appears Foote, who died earlier this year at the age of 92, couldn't have had a better legacy."
