See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.
By Natalie Musumeci
Brooklyn Daily
The beloved Heights Players brushed up on their Southern accents for this production.
Brooklyn’s oldest community theater company has taken on late playwright Horton Foote’s “Dividing the Estate,” a prize-winning play set in the fictional town of Harrison, Texas in 1987 that deals with family drama, greed, and money.
Director Ted Thompson said that the Heights Players’ premiere production of the play, which will run through Sept. 22 out of the former church on Willow Place in Brooklyn Heights that the group has called home since 1962, stays true to Foote’s masterpiece that premiered in 1989.
“We are not changing a word of Mr. Foote’s remarkable unique script,” said Thompson, a Sunset Park resident and longtime Heights Players director.
“The universality of Mr. Foote’s writing is such that the needs, feelings, and fears of each of the characters are as common to someone in Brooklyn as they are in Harrison, Texas, the town along the Gulf Coast where Mr. Foote sets so many of his wonderful plays.”
Thompson said that the 13-member cast worked hard to make their Texan inflections as authentic as they possibly can when acting out the comedic drama about the contentious Gordon family disputing over finances.
Matriarch Stella Gordon, the play’s main character who rules over the family’s grand abode, is forced to deal with her greedy children who insist that she divvy up the property sooner rather than later to make sure that they get their cut of money in a time where the country is facing a shifting economy.
“The play is alternately funny and sad and with its themes of survival in the face of economic uncertainty is very relevant today,” said Thompson.
Horton Foote’s “Dividing the Estate” at Heights Players [26 Willow Place between Joralemon and State streets in Brooklyn Heights, www.heightsplayers.org, (718) 237–2752]. Through Sept. 22, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 pm, Sundays, 2 pm, $20, $18 for seniors and those under 18.