Right at Home on Stage

If plays bring with them to the stage specific human traits--they are, after all, handmade by humans--then Horton Foote’s “The Day Emily Married” is a supremely patient piece.

In turn, it rewards the patience of the theatergoer. Foote doesn’t take obvious sides with his characters, yet he’s very crafty in bringing long-simmering familial resentments to a boil.

The Lost World theater company has done exceptionally well by this “lost” work, begun by the Wharton, Texas, native (now 84) in the late 1950s. Foote revised “The Day Emily Married” in 1962, the year he won an Academy Award for adapting “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The play reportedly never made it to a stage until a 1997 Silver Spring (Md.) Stage presentation. Its first full professional airing opened over the weekend at Whittier College’s Robinson Theatre, where the Lost World enjoys a residency.

Trunk plays by Foote are like new plays by Foote: plentiful enough to risk being taken for granted. “The Day Emily Married” is very much of its time. It’s a three-act, three-hour-and-15-minute stroll, begging for some trims, along with subtler telegraphing of the story. But the best of it ranks with Foote’s best work for the stage. Foote’s daringly uninflected prose sidles up to you, starts talking, keeps talking, and before you know it--without much in the way of dramaturgical arm-twisting--you’re hooked.

The setting is Foote’s fictional Harrison, Texas. Lee Davis (William Dennis Hunt) and his wife, Lyd (Beth Grant), have a divorced daughter, Emily (Stephanie Dunnam), whose new beau is an ambitious oilman-in-training, Richard (Cameron Watson). Ailing Lee, a good man whose generosity has led him into financial straits, encourages the union. He sees in Richard a right-hand man as well as a viable prospect for his daughter.

There’s much talk of money in Foote’s work, and “Emily” is no exception. To sell the family home, or not to? Does Lee have the heart to foreclose on a longtime debtor? Richard, eager to make an investment in oil, hasn’t time to dawdle; he has his eyes on the get-rich-quick prize. He’s also not trustworthy, when it comes to a woman from his past (Rebecca O’Brien).

So little happens in Act 1, you can barely hear the play’s motor running. In Act 2, however, the sparks fly, often rather suddenly. By now all the major characters are living in the family home, suffering from close proximity and frayed nerves. (Pure Chekhov.) The play is unafraid of bald, old-fashioned storytelling devices, among them a purloined letter. Yet Foote doesn’t consciously pump up the melodrama, even as he’s deploying melodramatic devices. When a playwright such as William Inge “does” small-town America, you’re aware of him trying to mythologize it, ennoble it while sexing it up. When Foote does it, he’s trying less--but with the right actors, you end up with more.

Director Crystal Brian doesn’t force a second, and she coaxes plaintive, expressive performances from a nicely attuned ensemble. The nasty encounter between Watson’s excellent, subtly charged Richard and Grant’s willful, lonely, chattering Lyd is a wonder. Hunt, last seen thundering his way through the thankless title role in A Noise Within’s “Cymbeline,” works like a charm here, lending texture and grace to a recessive but not uninteresting part. Veronica Thompson, Sarah Zinsser and Joan Chodorow handle smaller roles with ease.

As written, Emily’s not the center of the piece, and that’s too bad. Dunnam works hard; she succeeds in giving this woman a layer or two of experience. At play’s end, with her packed suitcase by the door and an uncertain life awaiting, Emily recalls the heroine of another 1950s-derived Foote play, “The Traveling Lady.” Like that work, this one feels very “Playhouse 90” (or, I suppose, “Playhouse 180”). At one point, Lyd consoles herself with a card game, draws the death card while she’s talking about the demise of her father--and at that precise moment Lee returns home, tired to the death. You anticipate a visit from the symbol police.

Despite such glitches, even with a facile ending undercutting the quiet power of the scenes preceding it, “The Day Emily Married” lingers in your mind. These characters make themselves at home on a stage. A lot of Foote’s writing works less well for me on film: The tasteful atmospherics of “On Valentine’s Day” only go so far, while the scenery-gobbling Geraldine Page swallowed “The Trip to Bountiful” whole. In theatrical confines, however, actors can slip quietly into Foote’s roles. And then, as in the electrifying Watson-Grant Act 2 encounter, we’re plunged into dark waters before we know it.

At such moments, “The Day Emily Married” adds up to a less tidy but more vivid experience than “The Young Man From Atlanta,” which won Foote the Pulitzer.

* “The Day Emily Married,” the Lost World at the Ruth B. Shannon Center, Whittier College, 6760 Painter Ave. (at Philadelphia), Whittier. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends July 30. $12.50-$15 ($5 student rush 20 minutes before curtain). (562) 907-4203. Running time: 3 hours, 15 minutes.

Veronica Thompson: Addie

Stephanie Dunnam: Emily Davis

Beth Grant: Lyd Davis

Cameron Watson: Richard Murray

William Dennis Hunt: Lee Davis

Sarah Zinsser: Alma Nash

Rebecca O’Brien: Lucy Douglas

Joan Chodorow: Maud Barker

Written by Horton Foote. Directed by Crystal Brian. Scenic design by Seanne Farmer. Lighting by David C. Palmer. Costumes by Robert Velasquez. Sound by Chris Van Ness. Stage manager Seanne Farmer.