. . . do not buy tickets to the Alley Theatre's first offering of the new season -- "The Old Friends."
The problem is not (with one exception) the acting. The problem is not the proscenium stage at the University of Houston, the Alley's home during a massive remodeling project. The problem is . . .
. . . the script.
Horton Foote wrote the play. Ordinarily that's a recommendation. He can be forgiven almost anything for his masterful scripts for "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Tender Mercies," one of the greatest movies ever.
Almost, but not quite.
Mr. Foote apparently wrote this script long ago and wisely elected not to foist it on the public. But now, five years after his death, it has crawled up on our doorstep, fresh from an off-Broadway run with some of the same players.
The play is set in Mr. Foote's fictional Wharton, called Harrison, and it's about a bunch of alcoholic Texas millionaires and millionaire wannabes, who react with the utmost rudeness and crudeness to the return to Harrison of a saintly widow who -- get this -- actually reads books! Imagine!
Mr. Foote sparks a lot of laughs by rubbing the nasty-spirited Texans together in drunken set-tos, but that's it. That's all you get. Laughing at drunks. You can save $50 by going directly to a bar and witnessing the real thing.
Think "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" meets "Virginia Woolf" meets "Hew-Haw."
New York critics eat this sort of thing up. Drunk, over-the-top, stupid Texans! Almost a documentary! The Alley's management, sadly, is not immune to the same impulse to mock the hand that feeds them, to misuse a figure of speech. It's the local art establishment's version of the disdain for Houston and Texas that is apparently a job requirement for the Houston Chronicle editorial board.
As for plot, the saintly widow takes up with a saintly local, but that's it. Both characters are stereotypes, just like the drunks. They don't grow. Circumstances change around them, but they don't change. Not really.
The one bright star is Texas and Broadway legend Betty Buckley, playing the richest and booziest character, Gertrude Hayhurst Sylvester Ratliff. Her character name is probably the biggest laugh in the show. Also worth an extra curtain call is Alley veteran Annalee Jefferies as the Big Family's matriarch, Mamie. She's also saintly, but unlike the others, lively and funny.
The most unfortunate casting, however, is Mr. Foote's daughter, Hallie Foote, as the book-readin' widow. The male saint, Howard, falls in love with her -- more properly, always has been in love with her -- but one searches in vain for the reason. The role calls for a cipher to serve as the perfect everywoman, a counterpoint to the nasty Texas regulars, and Ms. Foote answers the call too well.
Stay home. Watch TV. Play Scrabble. Save your money for the next visit of the "Greater Tuna" franchise, which does approximately the same thing as "The Old Friends," but with with more humor and without the pretense of being high theatre.
Do anything. Just keep away from "The Old Friends."
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