The Nibroc Trilogy: Gulf View Drive

CROWDED HOUSE Geis, center, feels hemmed in by relatives.

Photograph: Beth Lincks

If Horton Foote ever wonders whether his quiet brand of country drama has inspired any acolytes, he’ll find his answer in Gulf View Drive, the third and final play in Arlene Hutton’s Nibroc Trilogy, about the pre– and post–World War II lives of soldier-turned-writer Raleigh (Greg Steinbruner) and his schoolteacher wife, May (Alexandra Geis). The debt to Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful is striking, with ever-accommodating Raleigh and shrewish May’s marriage tested by the arrival of Raleigh’s obstinate mother, Mrs. Brummett (Ruth Nightengale). Add May’s mother (Polly Adams) and Raleigh’s feckless sister Treva (Christina Denzinger), who’s on the run from her family, to the mix and you have one crowded, unhappy house.

In Gulf View Drive, as in Foote’s world, scratch a seemingly contented family and you’ll find a troubled collection of broken dreams. Raleigh supports the clan by writing books for children, but his wife and mother think of him as lacking a “real job.” May feels dispossessed of her own home by the onslaught of relatives. The ever-sour Mrs. Brummett, robbed of her husband and farm, struggles stubbornly to shape her new home into something familiar. And the irritatingly aimless and demanding Treva searches for a way out of a hated marriage and an unwanted pregnancy.

Appropriate to such a gathering of discontents, nearly every line in Hutton’s well-crafted script reads as a gnawing complaint of some sort, while the story deftly illustrates how easily family ties can strangle the private soul. The view isn’t lovely, but it’s arresting. — Robert Simonson