Horton Foote's Orphans' Home Cycle No Longer Eyeing Broadway Transfer

The acclaimed off-Broadway production of Horton Foote’s nine-hour-long Orphans’ Home Cycle is no longer on track for a Broadway transfer this season, according to The New York Times. Although producer Daryl Roth had told the paper in January that she planned to move the trilogy of nine plays (which had an extended run at off-Broadway’s Signature Theatre Company) in the fall of 2010, the late playwright’s daughter, actress Hallie Foote, now says that a Broadway production of the autobiographical Cycle will not happen.

“The present climate simply isn’t hospitable to presenting a three-part, nine-hour work,” Foote told the Times. “Despite the many awards and accolades we received, the money did not follow, owing I think to the sheer size of the production and the many logistical challenges it poses.” A cast of 22 actors, including Hallie Foote, played multiple roles in the family saga that spanned three decades in the life of a small town in Texas.

Beyond funding, one glaring obstacle to a Broadway transfer of The Orphans’ Home Cycle is the fact that the show’s acclaimed star, Bill Heck, is currently back at Signature Theatre playing Joe Pitt in both parts of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. The Orphans’ Home Cycle had been touted for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize, but the award went to Next to Normal.