Hallie Foote to Star in Orphans' Home Cycle

By Adam Hetrick
May 29, 2009

Current Tony Award nominee Hallie Foote will appear in several of the plays that comprise Horton Foote's Orphans' Home Cycle, which will premiere at Hartford Stage in September.

The New York Times reports that Hallie Foote will appear in seven of the nine-play Orphans' Home Cycle, including Asa in Convicts, Lola Reeves in Cousins and Mary Vaughn in Courtship, Valentine's Day, 1918 and The Death of Papa.

A veteran of her late father's work, Hallie Foote is currently starring in the Hartford Stage engagement of Dividing the Estate. The Broadway production, which earned Tony nominations for Best Play and Best Featured Actress for Hallie Foote, made the Hartford transfer with much of the original cast intact.

The Orphans' Home Cycle, under the direction of Hartford Stage artistic director Michael Wilson (Dividing the Estate, The Carpetbagger's Children), will play Hartford Stage Sept. 3-Oct. 24 and will later arrive Off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre Company, playing Nov. 5, 2009 through March 6, 2010.

Part I of the cycle consists of the plays Roots in a Parched Ground, Convicts and Lily Dale; Part II includes The Widow Claire, Courtship and Valentine's Day; and Part III concludes with 1918, Cousins and The Death of Papa.

According to press notes, The Orphans' Home Cycle "begins with a father's death in a small-Texas town at the turn of the century, a loss that sends his son, Horace Robedaux, on an odyssey through the darkest corners of the heart as he learns to become a husband, father, and patriarch. Set in Foote's fictitious town of Harrison, Texas and based partly on the childhood of Foote's father and the courtship and marriage of his parents, the cycle is a wide-ranging, intricate work."