Theatre in Review: The Old Friends (Signature Theatre)The great thing about Horton Foote is you can never pin him down. His critics -- and even some of his friends -- like to pigeonhole him as a cracker barrel Chekhov who spins sentimental tales of simple country folk, their dreams eroded by time. But then how do you explain the Pinter-esque terrors of The Young Man from Atlanta or the tart comedy of Dividing the Estate? Then there's The Old Friends, a long aborning work making its premiere, which finds the author working a vein of material that wouldn't be unfamiliar to Lillian Hellman: The characters are venal. They wield money like a weapon. They say impossibly cruel things to each other. A gun is produced -- and you know what Chekhov says about guns... Once again, we are in Harrison, Texas, the fictional town near Houston that is Foote's own personal Yoknapatawpha County. In the early 20th century, the town's fortunes were hostage to the quality of the annual cotton crop, and good times and bad were met with a certain Protestant rectitude. In The Old Friends, however, it is 1965 and the agriculture-based economy has been wiped out by gushers of easy oil money. Prosperity has only bred boredom and discontent, however; and a sour bourbon haze permeates the atmosphere. (These people drink at a rate that would give pause to Edward Albee's characters). Drinking, sniping, and seduction are the main pastimes. The lights come up on a cocktail party being thrown by Julia Price, who lives with her husband, Albert, and her mother, Mamie Borden. This is a much more sordid reprise of the mother-child-spouse triangle of The Trip to Bountiful; Julia barely notices Mamie, except to occasionally to shut her up, and Albert openly loathes her. Mamie, having signed over her fortune to them, is their virtual prisoner. The party is to welcome home Hugo, Mamie's ne'er-do-well son, who has wandered around South America for years, vainly trying to strike it rich in the oil business. The festivities are choked off, however, when Sybil, Hugo's wife, appears to announce that upon their arrival in Houston, dropped dead in the airport. Hugo's death is a disaster for Sybil, who has been reduced to selling her mother's jewels for ready cash. It is also bad news for Mamie, who hoped to escape Julia's clutches by moving in with Hugo and Sybil. And it is really bad news for Gertrude, the Price's next-door neighbor -- when the news finally pierces the vodka fog in which she generally dwells. Gertrude Hayhurst Sylvester Ratliff is one of the few true monsters in the Foote canon and she is a real, authentic, made-in-Texas piece of work. Recently widowed, she will happily open her purse, pull out a piece of paper, and read the loving words she has had inscribed on her husband's tomb -- then, with a gust of boozy laughter, will add, "Who are we kidding? He hated me and I hated him!" Indeed, she is the merriest of widows, having set her sights on Howard, her husband's brother, who manages her farmland. Howard, another in a long line of feckless Horton Foote men, has quietly put up with Gertrude's vulgar attentions, but when Sybil turns up, suddenly single and in need of care, he sees a golden opportunity to rekindle his a romance with the girl who got away. In a production filled with indelible character portraits, none is more savagely realized than Betty Buckley's Gertrude. She barrels on stage like something launched by NASA -- a bundle of energy, living on nerves and vodka, clutching at Howard whenever he enters her orbit. Liquor does terrible things to her judgment; reintroduced to Sybil, she immediately reminisces about how her father put Sybil's father out of business. (She owns Sybil's childhood home and feels no shame about renting to her.) Later, propped up in bed after an epic binge, she instructs the maid to "turn on the smallest light over there," gingerly inspecting her face in a mirror and taking inventory of the damage. One minute she is practicing blackmail and coercion with the sweetest of Southern smiles -- kindly offering Sybil $20,000 if she'll just get out of town -- the next she is laying waste to a living room not her own. Gertrude is a terrible tornado of need, blowing through the lives of others and leaving misery in her wake, and Buckley nails her, right down to the last hair-raising detail. If Gertrude is the dominant figure in The Old Friends, she is brilliantly complemented by the rest of the company, especially Veanne Cox as Julia, clutching at happiness in the form of the nearest young man and rivaling Gertrude in cattiness. ("There's nothing worse than on old drunk," she mutters, downing herself another highball.) Next to them, Hallie Foote's quietly composed Sybil -- her eyes full of tragedies she will not discuss -- seems positively saintly, but she has claws, as well, most memorably when, offended by Howard's attentions, she gives him a no-holds-barred account of her unhappy life, and later when, fed up, she physically forces Gertrude to take a good look at herself. If this last scene has a touch of mid-career Bette Davis about it, it is also deeply satisfying. If you ever doubted that Foote could write big, scalding confrontations, check out The Old Friends at the earliest opportunity. There are also fine contributions from Adam LeFevre as the alternately stupified and vengeful Albert; Lois Smith as Mamie, who, taking a cocktail for the first time, announces, "The room is turning around me; are you aware of that?"; Sean Lyons as an eager new arrival in town who sees the companionship of older women as the most likely route to success in business; and Cotter Smith as Howard, turning away in shame and disgust as Gertrude paws at him. It's one of Foote's biggest plays -- a wide-angle canvas of drunkenness and dissipation, and Michael Wilson's production captures the sting of alcohol in every honeyed remark. Nor does it shy away from furious, full-throated emotional battles that stop just short of melodrama. Wilson has made sure that The Old Friends has a production design that is commensurate with its ambitions. Jeff Cowie provides three very different interiors -- Julia's suburban modern living room, Gertrude's cavernous bedroom, and Sybil's rundown family manse. Rui Rita has created lighting to fit each location -- most strikingly in Getrude's room, with sunlight held at bay by louvered window treatments. David C. Woolard's costumes are just right for the period and for the characters -- contrast, for example, Mamie's dowdy day-dresses with Julia's chic outfits, assembled to reassure herself that she is still in the game. John Gromada's sound design makes fine ironic uses of '60s bossa nova sounds to comment on the frivolous lives on display. In many of Foote's plays, there is a pronounced darkness hidden under the genteel manners, a profound awareness of living in a dark and mysterious universe. It's not insisted on, but it's there. The Old Friends reveals another side of the playwright altogether, a sharp-clawed portrait of wealthy predators and the innocents they prey upon. Given the fact that it was never produced in his lifetime, it's all the more surprising to discover a major addition to his canon. Once again, he surprises, even from beyond the grave. -- David Barbour 
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