Foote's Dividing the Estate Headed for Hartford Stage

If you missed Horton Foote’s Dividing the Estate on Broadway, you can catch it in Connecticut in May. The play, and 12 of the 13 members of its Broadway cast, have signed on for a production at Hartford Stage from May 28 to July 5, directed by Michael Wilson, artistic director of the Hartford company. Dividing the Estate will replace the previously announced gospel musical Gee’s Bend, which has been postponed until next season.

The cast of Dividing the Estate will include original cast members Hallie Foote, Arthur French and Gerald McRaney, along with Devon Abner, Pat Bowie, James DeMarse, Virginia Kull, Maggie Lacey, Nicole Lowrance, Jenny Dare Paulin and Keiana Richard.

Elizabeth Ashley, who created the role of matriarch Stella in Dividing the Estate, has signed on to play Mattie Fae Aiken in the Broadway production of Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County, beginning February 3. The length of her contract at August has not been revealed and no replacement has been named for the Hartford Stage production of Foote's play. Ashley has appeared at Hartford many times over the past decade, most recently last spring in Zerline’s Tale, directed by Wilson.

Dividing the Estate, a human comedy about a family that must confront its past as it prepares for its future, opened to critical acclaim off-Broadway in the fall of 2007 at Primary Stages. It began its limited engagement Broadway run in October 2008 at the Booth Theatre, produced by Lincoln Center Theatre in association with Primary Stages, and closed on January 4.