Graceful saga continues in HSC’s “The Orphans’ Home Cycle: Part 2


HARTFORD — Part 2 of the three-part play “The Orphans’ Home Cycle: The Story of a Marriage,” by the inimitable Horton Foote at the Hartford Stage Company can be seen on it’s own, or as part of a whole.
Horton Foote’s award winning plays and screenplays aren’t overly dramatic or grandiose and they require a certain degree of patience from the audience.
They are complex human comedies that slowly and carefully develop and evolve. Either the characters remember their past vividly, or they choose to ignore it, but they are all very human, fragile, and touching.
Part 1 of the cycle traced the life of Foote’s father starting from his childhood in 1902 in a fictitious town called Wharton, Texas.
Part 2 picks up with 20-year-old Horace Robedaux (Bill Heck) trying to find his way in the world without much education or support from his family.
Heck is well cast as the sensitive, kind, and ambitious lead character.
Robedaux courts a young widow, Claire Ratcliff, played by Virginia Kull, who has numerous suitors and two precocious children Molly and Buddy, played by the earnest and adorable Georgi James and Dylan Riley Snyder.
Kull’s Claire has suitors buzzing around her like bees and wants to marry soon, but Robedaux isn’t financially able to take on a family and leaves for business school in Houston instead.
While in Houston he meets Elizabeth Vaughn, played by Maggie Lacey, who comes from a wealthy family, and whose strict parents, played by Hallie Foote and James DeMarse, don’t approve of the match.
It takes a while but the father begins to change his mind about his new son-in-law and at one point, in a moving scene, he gives a set of Robedaux’s dead father’s books to the young man.
Near the end, DeMarse’s Mr. Vaughn says to his daughter and son-in-law, “There’s peace in this room, and contentment,” adding, “they don’t have much but they do have contentment.” A gift he acknowledges money can’t buy.
The leads are all strong, but what gives this series its depth are the excellent, well wrought secondary characters.
There’s the menacing Val Stanton, played by Lucas Caleb Rooney, Kull again playing the childlike Bessie Stillman, Devon Abner as the alcoholic son of the boarding house owner, Bobby Pate, with amusing turns by Annalee Jefferies as the matriarch Lucy (Vaughn) Stewart and Pamela Payton-Wright as Sarah Vaughn.
The set’s frame is the same as it was in the first play, with a quilted muslin that has scenic lighting, such as trees and homes superimposed upon it to good effect.
The costumes, especially the women’s gowns, are meticulous and lovely, by David Woolard.
Horton Foote, who died this spring at 90, has been called old-fashioned and his quiet and graceful plays were out of style for a time, but thankfully he never stopped writing and sticking to his perspective.
His memories and stories are a testament to perseverance and are a loving legacy to the importance of family.

THE ORPHAN'S HOME CYCLE: PART 2

3½ stars
Location: Hartford Stage Company, 50 Church Street, Hartford.
Production: Written by Horton Foote. Directed by Michael Wilson. Set designed by Jeff Cowie and David Barber. Costume design by David Woolard. Lighting design by Rui Rita. Original music and sound design by John Gromada. Choreography by Peter Pucci.
Running time: 3 hours with two intermissions.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with matinee performances Sundays and selected Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m. through October 4, with the three play marathon performances on Saturday, Oct. 17 and 24.
Tickets: $33 and up. Call 860-527-5151 or visit their website at hartfordstage.org.

ACTOR…CHARACTER
Bill Heck … Horace Robedaux
Maggie Lacey … Elizabeth Vaughn
Hallie Foote … Mrs. Vaughn
James DeMarse … Mr. Vaughn
Virginia Kull … Claire Ratcliff, Bessie Stillman
Jenny Dare Paulin … Laura Vaughn
Devon Abner … Bobby Pate, Roger Culpepper
Dylan Riley Snyder … Buddy
Georgi James … Molly