THEATER REVIEW : After 40 Years, ‘Trip’ Still Travels Well

Thomas Wolfe was wrong. Sometimes, you must go home again.

Horton Foote’s “A Trip to Bountiful” was first produced on Broadway in the early 1950s and later made into a film starring Geraldine Page. Now at Actors Co-Op, the play proves resiliently timely. In an era dominated by amorality and sensational gore, “Bountiful” acts like a blessed balm on frazzled nerves and serves as an eloquent reminder that the human verities--love, compassion, courage and dignity of spirit--still resonate, triumphantly and entertainingly.

Mrs. Carrie Watts (Brenda Ballard), trapped in a three-room apartment in Houston, wouldn’t know the meaning of urban anomie--but the urge to reconnect to her agrarian roots has become an obsession. Raised in the sleepy gulf community of Bountiful, Carrie moved to Houston years ago to make a better life for herself and her son Ludie (Durrell Nelson).

However, their high hopes for big-city life have not paid off. Ludie, sidelined by illness, is still creeping along the bottom of the corporate ladder. Childless after 15 years of marriage, his high-strung and excruciatingly idle wife, Jessie Mae (Rebecca Hayes), vents her own frustration by haranguing her live-in mother-in-law for the most petty reasons. For her part, Carrie endures the bleakness and indignity of her daily existence with one thought in mind. Somehow, someway, she will return to Bountiful.

Foote is a remarkably subtle playwright who combines the comic regionalism of Eudora Welty and the gothic eccentricity of Flannery O’Connor, anchored with a wistful ballast that is distinctly his own. Underpinning the winsomeness is the pain of the human condition. Overlaying the pathos is the pith of the human comedy.

Director Robin Strand and his exceptional cast scrupulously avoid the common pitfall of playing the Southern stereotypes in Foote’s work. Strand paces his actors like the high-performance thoroughbreds they are.

Ballard’s Carrie Watts is definitive, a fully fleshed and poignant characterization that is unmannered and completely genuine. Laura Becker is quintessentially sweet and convincing as Thelma, the demure young war bride who accompanies Carrie partway on her journey. Nelson’s effective stoicism hints at the wrenching sadness just underneath Ludie’s placid surface. And as the ever-feisty Jessie Mae, Hayes flirts hilariously with caricature in a performance that is nevertheless achingly real. John McDaniel and Richard Jones are also fine in their small but integral roles, and Mark Henderson’s versatile set smoothly accommodates the necessary scene changes.

As for going home again, those who long for a simpler time should take this “Trip.”

“The Trip to Bountiful,” Actors Co-Op at the Crossley Theatre, 1760 N. Gower, Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends Nov . 5. $15. (213) 964-3586. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.