Foote's 'Traveling Lady' comes to Plaza

FOOTE

Horton Foote, considered one of the nation's great playwrights and a Wharton native whose subject is often his hometown, provides the script for the Footeliters' next production, The Traveling Lady, which opens Friday at the Plaza Theatre on the Square.

The Traveling Lady is of roughly the same vintage as Foote's The Trip to Bountiful (Traveling Lady was first produced in New York in 1952, while Bountiful appeared in 1953), and is similarly a story of the search for home.

Georgette (Jessica McMurrey) and her young daughter, Margaret Rose (Sarah Grace Singleton), wander into the yard of Clara Breedlove (Quinn Wrench), looking for Judge Robedaux (Gregg Dimmick), who just might know of a house they could rent for $25 a month. Georgette makes an immediate impression on Clara's brother Slim (Reagan Wrench) and may be the only thing that can lift him from the doldrums he's been in since the death of his wife a year before.

Georgette and Margaret Rose have made the long bus ride from Tyler to prepare for the release of Georgette's husband Henry (Coty Fraker), from the penitentiary in Huntsville.

She doesn't know Henry has already arrived in Harrison, where he grew up, although his upbringing as the foster son of a woman who whipped him to "break his spirit" was far from ideal. A binge drinker who had gone to jail for brawling, Henry is being kept on the straight and narrow by Mrs. Breedlove's neighbor, Mrs. Tillman (Kathleen Wozniak), the town do-gooder.

When Henry and Georgette are reunited, guilt arouses the ne'er-do-well's worst instincts, leading to a run-in with the sheriff (Larry Sitka). Clara's other neighbors - Sitter Mavis (Henri-Ann Nortman) and her addled mother (Candyce Byrne, who also directs) - drop by to fill out a richly detailed portrait of a small Texas town in the early fifties.

The script was the basis for the 1963 movie Baby the Rain Must Fall, which was partly filmed in Wharton and starred Steve McQueen and Lee Remick.

There's little relationship, however, between the Hollywood version and the gentle, sometimes poignant and often funny original.

Generously underwritten by Mr. and Mrs. Frank Sinatra and Wanda White, The Traveling Lady will be performed Friday through Sunday, April 11-20.

Tickets are $10 for general admission and $8 for seniors 65 and older, students 24 and younger, or groups of ten or more. Curtaintime is 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. on Sundays.

Season ticket holders are requested to make reservations to assure availability of seats.

For tickets or reservations, please call 979-282-2970 or visit www.whartonplazatheatre. org.

Tickets may be purchased online through the Website or by calling the Plaza's 24-hour ticket hotline, 1-800-838-3006.