Photos From ORPHANS' Actors trip to Horton Foote's Hometown of Wharton, Texas

The Orphans' Home Cycle actors Bryce Pinkham (Brother Vaughn), Maggie Lacey (Elizabeth Vaughn Robedaux) and Bill Heck (Horace Robedaux) took a trip down to Wharton, Texas during their week off to visit Horton Foote's hometown, and the inspiration for Harrison, Texas, where Orphans' is set. Below are some photos of their trip.

Be sure to check out the latest entry of Bryce's Actor's Diary, "God's Country," where he talks about their amazing trip. Click here to read.

On the road to Wharton

Bryce's first firearm experience... enjoyment level: alarmingly high.

Bill Heck in front of Albert Horton's grave

Bill Heck and Maggie Lacey pay their respects to the real Horace and Elizabeth

The porch swing at the Vaughn (Brooks) family home (Courtship and The Death of Papa)

The porch swing at the 1918 house (Horace and Elizabeth's home in 1918 and The Death of Papa)

The reviews are in for ORPHANS' HOME CYCLE: Part 2: The Story of a Marriage!

The Orphans' Home Cycle, Part 2: The Story of a Marriage opened at Signature Theatre on December 17, 2009, and the critics received it just as rapturously as they did Part 1!

An Insignificant Riddle and the Other Women in an Orphan’s Life
Ben Brantley, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Roberta!” the drunken man calls out in his sleep, his voice as lonely as a train whistle on a prairie. A little boy who overhears him thinks it sounds as if somebody were being murdered. But the man’s roommates in a small-town boarding house in Harrison, Tex., are more perplexed than alarmed. “Who’s Roberta?” they ask one another.

The answer (to be revealed at the end of this review) is inconsequential to the central story of the exquisite “Widow Claire,” the first of three short plays in the second part of Horton Foote’s ever more engrossing “Orphans’ Home Cycle” at the Peter Norton Space on West 42nd Street. The restless dreamer is a minor character, and I suppose you could say that his nightmare — if that’s what it is — is an exceedingly minor event in the so-far splendid production of nine interconnected dramas by Foote, from the Signature Theater Company and Hartford Stage. (The third installment of three plays opens next month, and will continue in repertory with the other two.)

But minor events set off major ripples in the minds of those watching “The Orphans’ Home” plays, which follow the deracinated life of Horace Robedaux, a character based on Foote’s father. Seemingly unimportant moments acquire talismanic significance when you look back, the way small details from your own past loom large and revealingly in memory.

“Roberta,” that repeated cry in the night out of nowhere, comes to feel like a theme song for “The Story of a Marriage,” the collective title for this trilogy about the mystery, salvation and randomness of love, which opened on Thursday night. (Besides “The Widow Claire,” the others are “Courtship” and “Valentine’s Day.”)

Horace, who was introduced as a boy in “The Story of a Childhood,” the cycle’s first chapter, is now a man (affectingly played by Bill Heck), possessed of a hungry ambition and an undermining passivity in equal measures. He is looking to recreate the home he lost — if he ever had it — when he was 12, the year his father died, and his mother moved out of Harrison with Horace’s sister, leaving the boy behind. Finding a home means finding a mate, a pursuit that gives shape to the “Marriage” plays, which cover five years of Horace’s life in Harrison, from 1912 to 1917.

Though these works present what is, on some levels, a conventional love story with a happy ending — inspired by the elopement of Foote’s parents — they never shake off the haunted chill that runs through all his work. For the characters created by Foote, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Young Man From Atlanta,” permanence in relationships is a pipe dream. And the folks, young and old, who inhabit the “Marriage” trilogy are forever asking, “What if,” in a fretful litany:

What if the person you love dies tomorrow? What if love fades or turns sour? What if you were never really in love at all?

Directed by Michael Wilson with assured understatement, and acted by a consistently convincing and versatile repertory cast, these plays flow with a sense of everyday life accelerated, moving by us in a blur of dramatic happenings lodged in the fine grit of the ordinary. The stories swapped here include tales of madness, alcoholism, suicide and deaths in childbirth.

Click here to read the entire review:
http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/theater/reviews/18orphan.html


The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Part 2: The Story of a Marriage
Terry Teachout, WALL STREET JOURNAL

“The second part of "The Orphans' Home Cycle," Horton Foote's family album of plays about a turn-of-the-century Texas family and its struggles with the coming of modernity, has just opened at Signature Theatre Company. It upholds the immeasurably bright promise of the first installment. Not since Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia" has so self-evidently significant a large-scale theatrical endeavor come to New York.

Horton Foote died last March, immediately after putting the finishing touches on "The Orphans' Home Cycle." Could it be that he brought his long and illustrious career to a triumphant close by giving us the Great American Play? Come to Signature Theatre and see for yourself.”

Click here to read the entire review:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704869304574596302043091572.html


Give ‘Home Cycle’ a Spin
Elisabeth Vincentelli, NEW YORK POST

“Horton Foote's "Or phans' Home Cycle" is an oxymoron: an intimate, sprawling piece. It's made up of nine plays spread over 26 years, with a cast of characters hanging from extensive family trees, yet each show feels like the snug snapshot of a particular, small-scale moment.

It's not a fanfare Foote has written for the common man, but a series of chamber pieces.

The cycle is such a vast undertaking that the Signature company is unveiling Michael Wilson's production in successive installments of three plays each. The new one, "The Story of a Marriage," follows last month's "The Story of a Childhood," with "The Story of a Family" due in January.

Rarely has everyday life been so modestly inspiring as it is in Foote's hands. The worst part is that we have to wait another month to see how it all ends.”

Click here to read the entire review:
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/theater/reviews/give_home_cycle_spin_0Zu1gExD0dUsF253S6CwhI


Horton Foote epic gets exquisite treatment
Joe Dziemianowicz, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

“Five stars (out of five)

Based on size alone, "The Orphans' Home Cycle" would qualify as the year's big theater event.
This final work of Horton Foote, who died in March, is a three-part series whose running time adds up to a whopping nine hours.

But those are just numbers.

The real reason Foote's drama is so big and important is because it's so exquisitely realized — the writing, acting, direction and design.

So far, it's a home run for its presenters, the Signature Theatre Company and Hartford Stage.”

Click here to read the entire review:
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/2009/12/18/2009-12-18_the_orphans_home_cycle_horton_footes_last_epic_gets_exquisite_treatment.html


Horace Robedaux journeys into adulthood, marriage
Mike Kuchwara, ASSOCIATED PRESS

“Horace Robedaux continues his journey into adulthood in Part 2 of "The Orphans' Home Cycle," Horton Foote's masterful examination of one man's life in small-town Texas in the first decades of the 20th century.

For those who are jumping in midstream, Horace has grown up. An unsettling childhood and the beginnings of maturity were the centerpiece of the cycle's opening trio of plays. Now, in the middle section of Foote's mammoth nine-play marathon, the man, portrayed with a touch of melancholy by Bill Heck, is searching for stability — and a wife.

Part 2, which the Signature Theatre Company opened Thursday at its Peter Norton Space, celebrates that quest, first with "The Widow Claire," the title of the evening's touching curtain-raiser. Heck projects a mournful rootlessness even as Horace courts this lonely young woman (Virginia Kull) who is faced with raising two children alone in rural Harrison, Texas.

Part 3, in which Horace moves into the role of family patriarch, opens Jan. 26. We can't wait.”

Click here to read the entire review:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/12/17/entertainment/e151322S85.DTL


The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Part 2: The saga continues
David Cote, TIME OUT NEW YORK

“Five stars (out of five).

In accordance with the Law of Trilogies (which I last invoked for The Coast of Utopia), the second part of Horton Foote’s immensely satisfying Orphans’ Home Cycle is fraught and full of darkness.

Director Michael Wilson works wonders with an adept 22-person ensemble. His actors achieve a fascinating blend of wistfulness and stoicism: Even the craziest and most inebriated characters in Harrison, Texas (the primary setting), avoid hammy excess in favor of poignant restraint and clarity. And while most of the tales’ ugliness and violence occurs offstage, there’s a palpable tension on the Signature’s intimate stage, as Horace and the others engage in a pitched moral battle between kindness and cruelty. We have to wait until the final chapter, in late January, to see who wins.”

Click here to read the entire review:
http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/theater/81559/the-orphans-home-cycle-part-2-theater-review


The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Part 2: The Story of a Marriage
Robert Feldberg, BERGEN RECORD

“The plays are superbly acted by a large cast, and have been directed by Michael Wilson with uncommon sensitivity.

The last part of the trilogy, "The Story of a Family," will pick up Horace's and Elizabeth's lives a year later, in 1918. It's something to be eagerly anticipated.”

Click here to read the entire review:
http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/79593487.html


The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Part 2: The Story of a Marriage
Erik Haagensen, BACKSTAGE

“As with Part One, three hours fly by as this utterly engaging and deeply compelling work unfolds. At the center is Bill Heck's superb Horace. Graceful, handsome, impeccably mannered—it's clear why the ladies take to him. But Heck never forgets Horace's inner core of self-doubt, fueled in part by the pain of his mother's neglect. Darkness is always simmering under the surface. Bring on Part Three."

Click here to read the entire review:
http://www.backstage.com/bso/reviews-ny-theatre/the-orphans-home-cycle-part-two-8212-the-1004054431.story

Text Summary of The Orphans' Home Cycle, Part 1: The Story of a Childhood

Missed The Orphans' Home Cycle, Part 1: The Story of a Childhood, or want to catch up on what happened before you see Part 2: The Story of a Marriage? Here's a summary of what happened:

Act I, Roots in a Parched Ground, takes us to Harrison, Texas in 1902. Horace’s father, Paul Robedaux, a once prominent lawyer, has succumbed to alcoholism and is on his death bed. Horace’s mother, Corella Thornton, who separated from her husband before he died, has been working in Houston. Horace’s extended families, the Robedauxs and the Thorntons, once occupied a prosperous place in the antebellum Southern aristocracy, but have failed to recover from the devastation of the Civil War and are struggling to make ends meet. The Robedauxs, grief-stricken after Paul Horace’s death, sell their house and move out of Harrison. Corella returns to Houston with Horace’s younger sister Lily Dale and remarries Pete Davenport, a railroad man who “has no bad habits.” Mr. Davenport refuses to take Horace, believing that a boy his age should be put to work. Horace stays with his mother’s family, quits school, and sets off on his own to work full-time, with the hope of saving enough money to buy a tombstone for his father’s grave.

Act II, Convicts, takes place on Christmas Eve, 1904. Horace is working at a dry goods store on the Gautier plantation, which is worked by black convicts. The plantation owner, Soll Gautier, is an alcoholic and delusional confederate war veteran who continually defers paying Horace his salary. Instead, he enlists Horace in accompanying him throughout the night while he hunts convicts and painfully recalls his troubled past. Back at the house, Soll senses that his time has come, and asks Horace to stay with him until he dies. By the morning, Soll is dead, and Horace is out of a job. Asa Gautier Vaughn, Soll’s niece and the inheritor of his estate, refuses to pay Horace for his work.

Act III, Lily Dale, brings us to Houston in 1910 where Horace has come to pay a visit to his mother and sister. Lily Dale shows off her piano skills to Horace and secretly confides in him that she has a suitor named Will Kidder, whom she hopes to marry. The visit ends abruptly when Mr. Davenport, who believes more than ever that Horace should be fully supporting himself, comes home early. Corella asks Horace to leave, but a debilitating fever confines him to the Davenport home until he regains his health. Corella works to maintain an amiable environment as tension festers between Horace and Mr. Davenport. Horace had hoped to get a job working on the railroad with Mr. Davenport, but Mr. Davenport gives the job to Will instead. After hearing about them from Will, Horace decides to attend a business school in Houston, so that he will be able to advance beyond being a store clerk. Lily Dale is pleased by Mr. Davenport’s approval of Will, but she becomes frustrated with Horace’s curiosity about their late father. When Horace is finally healthy enough to leave, he sets off for Harrison, knowing that a home does not exist in Houston with his mother, sister, and step-father.

See you at the theatre!

Catching Up on Part 1 of The Orphans' Home Cycle

Missed The Orphans' Home Cycle, Part 1: The Story of a Childhood, or want to catch up on what happened before you see Part 2: The Story of a Marriage? Check out the video montage below, created by our friends (and co-producers) at Hartford Stage, or click here for a text summary.

See you at the theatre!

The Orphans' Home Cycle, Part 1: The Story of a Childhood Production Photos

Henry Hodges and Dylan Riley Snyder

Check out these beautiful production photos from The Orphans' Home Cycle, Part 1: The Story of a Childhood. All photos by Gregory Costanzo.

Jenny Dare Paulin and Bill Heck

Leon Addison Brown, Charles Turner, Henry Hodges and James DeMarse

Pat Bowie, Charles Turner, Henry Hodges, Leon Addison Brown and James DeMarse

Bill Heck and Pamela Payton-Wright

Bill Heck and Annalee Jefferies

Henry Hodges and Gilbert Owuor

The Critics Rave About ORPHANS' HOME CYCLE, PART 1!

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!

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.”

Click here to read the entire review:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/11/19/entertainment/e154848S60.DTL


Horton Foote: ‘Home’ at Last
Terry Teachout, WALL STREET JOURNAL

“Horton Foote, who died in March at the age of 92, had to wait until the very end of his life to win general recognition as one of America's greatest playwrights. The tide was turned by a sterling pair of Off-Broadway revivals, the Signature Theatre Company's 2005 production of "The Trip to Bountiful" and Primary Stages' 2007 production of "Dividing the Estate," that opened the eyes of a new generation of theatergoers to Foote's low-key mastery. When "Dividing the Estate" transferred to Broadway the following year, he scored his first commercial success on the New York stage—just in time for him to revel in it. Would that Foote could have lived to attend the New York opening of the first part of "The Orphans' Home Cycle," co-produced by Signature and Connecticut's Hartford Stage, where all three installments were seen earlier this year. It will, I suspect, be remembered as the most significant theatrical event of the season, the kind of show you tell your grandchildren you saw.”

Click here to read the entire review:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704782304574541813891284086.html


Horton Foote, Tarell Alvin McCraney tell family stories
Linda Winer, NEWSDAY

“The first three of Horton Foote's last nine plays have his customary ease, elegance and deceptive simplicity. This is straightforward storytelling, inspired by the life of the playwright's father. It is mostly set in the playwright's favorite hometown surrogate, the fictional Harrison, Texas, and features, in a number of roles, his daughter and worthy flame keeper, Hallie Foote.

This part of the cycle begins in 1902, when Horace Robedaux, 12, (an astonishingly poised Dylan Riley Snyder) endures the death of his kind but alcoholic father and the realization that his mother's new husband will only support Horace's bratty sister Lily Dale. The evening ends in 1910, after Horace (the engaging Bill Heck) has endured a Dickensian series of picaresque affronts. Twenty-two actors play multiple roles under Michael Wilson's loving direction.”

Click here to read the entire review:
http://www.newsday.com/columnists/linda-winer/horton-foote-tarell-alvin-mccraney-tell-family-stories-1.1603151


The Orphans’ Home Cycle: Part 1
An American Classic Begins
David Cote, TIME OUT NEW YORK

“Five stars (out of five). Director Michael Wilson and his versatile, highly talented ensemble (including the radiant Hallie Foote, the late author’s daughter) wrestle their material into shape, delivering three hours of episodic narrative spanning 1902 to 1910 without a dull moment. Two more parts of this trilogy remain, and we shall see if Horace fnds his place in the world. Foote’s understated epic is an authentic American classic about the birth pangs of the 20th century. It’s told with humor, deep sadness and great writerly craft. I can’t wait to see what happens next.”

Click here to read the entire review:
http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/theater/80791/the-orphans-home-cycle-part-1-theater-review


The Orphans’ Home Cycle: Part 1 – The Story of a Childhood
Melissa Rose Bernardo, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

“Happiness is illusory and joy fleeting, but there's much melancholy beauty to be found in The Story of a Childhood, the first third of the late Horton Foote's nine-play Orphans Home Cycle at Off Broadway's Signature Theatre Company.

With its tales of harsh times, social and economic change, Reconstruction, education, and industry in small-town America, The Story of a Childhood heralds the beginning of something extraordinary. And you'll be waiting with baited breath for Foote's next chapter. Grade: A–“

Click here to read the entire review:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20321559,00.html


The Orphans’ Home Cycle: Part 1 – The Story of a Childhood
Erik Haagensen, BACKSTAGE

“From the moment the redoubtable Pamela Payton-Wright settles into her train seat and, as an enthusiastic elderly Southern Baptist, engages the young male stranger seated before her with ladylike aggression, you know you are in the best of hands. By the time director Michael Wilson's bone-deep production of the first part of Horton Foote's "The Orphans' Home Cycle" is over, nearly three hours have passed in the blink of an eye. I wanted the second part to begin immediately.

With two installments still to come, it's premature to characterize the complete work. But if they live up to the first part, what we are being served here is nothing less than an American masterwork.”

Click here to read the entire review:
http://www.backstage.com/bso/content_display/reviews/ny-theatre-reviews/e3ida2894bc190c143c17fec51e09994e30


The Orphans’ Home Cycle: Part 1
Dan Bacalzo, THEATERMANIA

“Before passing away earlier this year at the age of 92, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Horton Foote edited down and combined nine of his plays into a three-part opus, collectively called The Orphans' Home Cycle, and now being presented by the Signature Theatre Company in a co-production with Hartford Stage. And the overall fine quality of the two hour-and-fifty-minute first installment makes for an excellent start to this epic undertaking.”

Click here to read the entire review:
http://www.theatermania.com/off-broadway/reviews/11-2009/the-orphans-home-cycle-part-one_22871.html

Behind the Scenes Video -- The Road to New York

Performances of The Orphans' Home Cycle, Part 1: The Story of Childhood began last week at Signature Theatre Company, but that hasn't stopped Bryce Pinkham from continuing to bring you a behind the scenes look at the world premiere of Horton Foote's trilogy! Check out the video below for footage of the cast and crew preparing for the first preview at Hartford Stage back in September, as well as celebrating their accomplishment after the show. And stay tuned for even more glimpses at what the backstage happenings of this massive theatrical event!