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By BOB NOCEK; Times Leader Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 08, 1997 Page:
NEW YORK — Horton Foote has a remarkably soft touch, his play is so full
of nuance and subtlety that it sometimes feels like nothing is really
happening.
His 1995 Pulitzer Prize-winner “The Young Man From Atlanta” has just that
effect with great potency, teasing with hints and innuendo through a hearty
two hours. Its open-ended run on Broadway began at the Longacre Theatre on
March 27.
“The Young Man from Atlanta” is so stuffed with possibilities that it seems
headed for a mighty finish. In the end, however, it only really delivers those
same possibilities with a nudge toward resolution.
After promising greatness, “The Young Man From Atlanta” settles for being
only very, very good.
It is a masterful piece nonetheless, full of passion without bombast and
emotion without melodrama.
The play draws its vitality from its cast, most notably Rip Torn and
Shirley Knight as Will and Lily Dale Kidder, the parents shaken by the death
of their 37-year-old son Bill. Their performances are moving and powerful,
finding a wonderful balance when blended with Foote’s agile writing.
Their son’s death may have been a suicide, though the play never tells. But
their son couldn’t swim, yet walked out into a Florida lake and drowned. It is
the Kidders’ questions about their son’s death –and life — that ultimately
drive the play.
We never meet Randy Carter, the young man for whom the play is titled. But
we learn that he was Bill’s roommate in an Atlanta boarding house, and that he
came to the funeral, grief-stricken.
He has now come to Houston to see the Kidders. But Will, for reasons he
won’t explain, wants no part of Carter and has asked his wife also to not
speak with Carter.
Will Kidder is a big bluster of a man, played to snarling perfection by
Torn, an emotional contortionist who says as much with a glare or a scowl as
by grumbling and shouting. Even in his best moods he’s surly, but forgive him
that, for he has lost his job of 40 years — just as he and Lily Dale are
moving into an expensive suburban home — and he is plagued by heart trouble.
His wife Lily Dale also gives him reason to boil over.
She isn’t the smartest woman, gullible enough to believe that when black
maids did not show up for work, it was a “Disappointment Day” organized by
Eleanor Roosevelt “to disappoint white people.”
It also turns out that she has given away a large sum of money, because she
believed stories of which the others are skeptical.
Knight’s portrayal of Lily Dale is suitably conservative. She breaks into
tears at the mere mention of her son, but always avoids opportunities for
excess.
Lily Dale is a naive woman who lives in denial, unwilling to accept the
possibility that Bill killed himself, or that he was anything other than what
they had assumed all along.
There are gradual revelations that allude otherwise, but Lily Dale fights
hard not to accept them. Will, on the other hand, tries to ignore them because
it appears he believes them.
“There’s a Bill I knew, and a Bill you knew,” he tells Lily Dale. “And
that’s the only Bill I care to know about.”
But there is another Bill, “The Young Man from Atlanta” tries to tell us in
a compelling way. And that we are drawn in by the questions only makes us long
even more for the answers we are never given.
“The Young Man From Atlanta” is playing at the Longacre Theatre, 220 West
48th St., New York. Call (212) 239-6200 for tickets.
Broadway