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Dividing The Estate Conquers Broadway

By Broadway Magazine Staff

Dividing The Estate Conquers Broadway

The newest Broadway offering from celebrated playwright Horton Foote opened last night at the Booth Theater, and today the critics have voiced their opinion. The news is that the Horton Foote comedy is a big Broadway hit. The family comedy set in Foote's fictional Texas town has caused critics to invoke the name of Chekhov and has brought about favorable comparisons to last season's Best Play August: Osage County.

Praise from critics is universal for the show's effective humor and solid cast including Elizabeth Ashley and Hallie Foote, the daughter of the playwright. The show is another critical success for Lincoln Center Theater. Sample reviews below:


• This production - which arrives with most of its original cast, directed with hair-trigger timing by Michael Wilson - has ripened into an ideally balanced ensemble piece, with acting that matches and magnifies Mr. Foote's slyly and acutely observant writing.
- Ben Brantley, New York Times


• A tart Chekhovian elegy for a disappearing way of life and a gentle skewering of complacent privilege, "Dividing the Estate" in many ways is a genteel cousin to the more acerbic domestic squabble being played out across the street in Tracy Letts' "August: Osage County."
- David Rooney, Variety


• " ...it's a southern gothic comedy about family and avarice that is full of well-earned belly-laughs. Who knew Foote could be this funny?"
- Barbara & Scott Siegel, Theatermania


• "Dividing the Estate" will draw you into its drawing room and the shadows beyond with the theatrical equivalent of a page-turner, capturing your undivided attention as you hang on its teasing turmoil in guiltlessly glad complicity.
- John Simon, Bloomberg


• "Dividing the Estate" goes for laughs and succeeds, and at the same time comments on more sweeping notions of avarice, entitlement and carpetbagging karma.
- Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News


• Yet there is a generosity of spirit in Foote's handiwork. He embraces all his creations, even the most mean-spirited of them.
- Michael Kuchwara, AP


• The folks we meet in Estate, which opened Thursday at the Booth Theatre, can be immensely irritating, but they're not, well, bad people - or, truth be told, terribly interesting ones.
- Elysa Gardner, USA Today


• This is a linear, old-fashioned play that continues the playwright's concerns with the shifting world of Harrison, a stand-in for his real hometown, Wharton.
- Malcolm Johnson, Hartford Courant

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