The Orphans Home Cycle, Part 2 -- The Story of a Marriage
Melissa Rose Bernardo
December 17, 2009: When we last left our intrepid Texan hero, Horace Robedaux (Bill Keck), at the end of the superb part 1 of Horton Foote's epic nine-play The Orphans Home Cycle — don't worry if you haven't seen part 1, it's still running at Off Broadway's Signature Theatre, and it's not a prerequisite for part 2 — he was on a train, being prayed over by busybody Baptist Mrs. Coons (Pamela Payton Wright). Over the course of the first three plays, Horace saw his father die of alcoholism and his mother remarry a man who despised him but loved his sister; he was shipped off to a plantation to work alongside convicts for a paranoid plantation owner; and as a grown man, he was shunned again by his own family. As Mrs. Coons asks, ''Father of mercy!'' Please let something good happen to poor Horace!
READ THE REVIEW