Stage Review
Play capitalizes on power of suggestion
Joseph T Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic
The central figure in the play is Bill, the adult child of Will and Lily Dale Kidder, who one day walked into into a Florida lake and drowned. Will and Lily Dale never say that it might have been a suicide.
The second unseen but powerful character is Randy, the young man who was Bill's roommate in an Atlanta boarding house. It turns out that Bill and Lily Dale have been giving Randy money to assist him with family calamities. The gifts have been hidden from Will, who would have strongly disapproved for unspoken reasons. It is never discussed that the relationship between the young men might have been sexual or that either of them might have bilked the old couple out of substantial sums.
'The Young Man From Atlanta'
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The Army Community Theatre Sunday@2 Matinee Readers Theatre
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2 p.m. Sunday, Richardson Theatre, Fort Shafter
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Tickets: $6, 438-4480
Now Will and Lily Dale are in crisis. Will has been fired from his job of 40 years, just after spending all his savings on an elaborate new house and furniture. Worse, he suffers a heart attack that temporarily immobilizes him. Then the young man from Atlanta pays them a visit at their Houston home, asking what has turned them both against him.
He never makes it past the front door, as Will and Lily Dale act out their private drama in Checkhovian style, where a look, a sigh, or an offhand remark can fill a living room with poignant meaning.
Consequently, as the limited action of the play goes forward — can Will pull together his finances and keep their lives on course? — the psychological drama goes progressively deeper, re-examining facts and motives, and reinterpreting family history in terms of the current predicament. It's something like psychic archeology and won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for the playwright.
The bulk of the task is carried in this reading by Jim Hutchison and Jill Esser.
Hutchison has found the pace of Will's weakening pulse — normally robust and challenging, but weakened now into denial, anger, and resignation. He gives us the image of an old fighter, down for the count but stubbornly struggling to again find his footing.
Esser presents a gracious Lily Dale, who finds comfort and protection in her own befuddlement. She may be one of the last Southern gentlewomen, hanging on in 1950 to genteel traditions that confuse tact and cordiality with lies and denial.
The play, then, is really about illusions, disappointment, loneliness and failure, but slowly unwraps itself to soften its uncomfortable gift of clearer reality.
Richard Pellett acts as a leavening agent, adding much delight by his reading of several small roles.
Lest the message overwhelm its audience, Foote injects a note of recovery into the final scene, suggesting that honest assessment need not kill, but can make us stronger.
The Army Community Theatre does a consistently good job of creating mental images during its Sunday play-reading series. As a result, we are often sure we've seen action that was never staged, but was suggested by the dialogue and narration.
In the production of Horton Foote's "The Young Man From Atlanta," director Vanita Rae Smith pushes the concept another step forward by selecting a drama that evolves based on unspoken words and unseen characters.
