Foote's Dividing the Estate Set for Broadway's Booth Theatre

Lincoln Center Theater's forthcoming Broadway production of Dividing the Estate has found a home: The family comedy by Horton Foote will begin previews on October 23 at the Booth Theatre and open on November 20. Michael Wilson, who directed the play at Primary Stages last fall, will stage the Broadway production with his entire 13-member original cast, headed by Elizabeth Ashley, Hallie Foote and Gerald McRaney.

Set in Foote's fictional Harrison, Texas a stand-in for his real-life hometown of Wharton, in 1987, Dividing the Estate tells the often hilarious story of an extended family in conflict over what should be done with its extensive property holdings. Ashley plays the matriarch, with Foote, Devon Abner her real-life husband and McRaney as her bickering children. The cast also includes Penny Fuller, Arthur French, Penny Fuller, James DeMarse, Pat Bowie, Virginia Kull, Maggie Lacey, Nicole Lowrance, Jenny Dare Paulin and Keiana Richard.

Dividing the Estate will be the first Foote play presented on Broadway since his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Young Man From Atlanta was produced in 1997. The playwright, who turned 92 on March 14, recently declined a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Best Revival for the Primary Stages production, setting up a push to have Dividing the Estate considered as a new play for the 2009 Tony Awards. A version of the play was first produced in 1989 at the McCarter Theatre, but Foote maintains that it has been substantially rewritten since then.

Foote has enjoyed a number of well-reviewed off-Broadway productions in recent years, including The Day Emily Married and When They Speak of Rita at Primary Stages, The Trip to Bountiful at Signature Theater, and The Traveling Lady at Ensemble Studio Theatre. Lincoln Center Theater produced his play The Carpetbagger's Children in 2002. As a screenwriter, Foote won Academy Awards for To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies.

Perhaps anticipating the runaway success of its current revival of South Pacific, Lincoln Center Theater had announced in March that Dividing the Estate would be produced at a Shubert Broadway house. The company most recently used the Booth for its revival of Edward Albee's Seascape in 2005.