Rousuck's Review: 'The Trip to Bountiful' at Arena Players

It's time for another of Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck's weekly reviews of the Baltimore regional stage. Earlier this week, she joined Tom in the studio to spotlight the new production of Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful, now on stage at Baltimore's Arena Players. The play tells the story of Carrie Watts, an elderly woman living alone in a cramped Houston apartment who nostalgically decides to return to her childhood home in Bountiful, Texas. Her journey, though opposed by her family, become an odyssey of self-discovery and a new understanding of the meaning of home. Horton Foote's classic tale has had a long and successful journey on stage, film and television. It premiered in March 1953 as an NBC teleplay starring Lillian Gish, and later that year debuted on the Broadway stage with Gish again in the lead. Award-winning Broadway revivals were produced in 2005 and again in 2013, a production that earned Cicely Tyson a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. In 1985, playwright Foote reprised The Trip to Bountiful in his screenplay for an Oscar-winning Hollywood version starring Geraldine Page. The story was again adapted for TV in 2014 with Cicely Tyson reprising her lead role in an Emmy-nominated performance. The new stage production of The Trip to Bountiful, helmed by Arena Players' veteran artistic director Donald Owens, and starring Sharon Carter Brown as Carrie Watts, continues through November 30. For showtimes and ticketing info, click here. Founded in Baltimore in 1953, Arena Players, Inc. is the oldest continuously operating African-American community theater in the U.S. It's located at 801 McCulloh St, Baltimore, MD 21201.