Vanessa Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Condola Rashad added to Broadway’s The Trip to Bountiful Posted by Wilson Morales
December 21, 2012
Source: HuffPost
Vanessa Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Condola Rashad will be joining Cicely Tyson on “The Trip to Bountiful.”
Producers said Thursday that the trio have signed up to star in a revival of Horton Foote‘s moving play about acceptance and coming home. It first appeared on Broadway in 1953 and became a 1985 film starring Geraldine Page.
Set in the 1940s, the play tells the story of an elderly woman, Carrie Watts, who wants to return home to the small town where she grew up, but is frequently stopped from leaving Houston, Texas by her daughter-in-law, and an overprotective son who won’t let her travel alone. However, old Mrs. Watts is determined to outwit her son and bossy daughter-in-law, and sets out to catch a train, only to find that trains don’t go to Bountiful anymore. She eventually boards a bus to a town near her childhood home. On the journey, she befriends a girl traveling alone and reminisces about her younger years and grieves for her lost relatives. Her son and daughter-in-law eventually track her down, with the help of the local police force. However, Mrs. Watts is determined. The local sheriff, moved by her yearning to visit her girlhood home, offers to drive her out to what remains of Bountiful. The village is deserted, and the few remaining houses are derelict. Mrs. Watts is moved to tears as she surveys her father’s land and the remains of the family home. Her son eventually turns up, and drives her back to Houston.
Tyson, who is an Academy Award nominee and is an Emmy Award winner, will now have some glittering company onstage: Gooding has an Oscar, Williams is a Tony and Emmy nominee, and Rashad has a Tony nomination for “Stick Fly.”
The revival will appear for just 14 weeks and previews begin March 31 at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. Opening night is set for April 23. Michael Wilson will direct.
