SOAP LAKE — Home, and what it means, is at the heart of the Masquers Theater’s production of “The Trip to Bountiful,” written by playwright Horton Foote, opening June 12.

“The show is very nostalgic,” said director Jesse Huntwork. “It’s about going back to your hometown, your home roots, and remembering where you came from.”

Carrie Watts (played by Rosalee Chamberlain) lives with her son Ludie (Jason Noble) and his wife Jessie May (Machelle Miller) in a small Houston, Texas, apartment in the post-World War II era, but none of them are really happy with the arrangement. Jessie May carps constantly at her mother-in-law, who responds passive-aggressively, while Ludie is forced to play the peacemaker.

“They pretty much use her to clean house and cash her Social Security check, and she’s going crazy,” Huntwork said. 

More than anything, Carrie wants to return to her hometown of Bountiful, which she and Ludie left many years earlier so he could get an education. Unknown to Carrie, Bountiful’s population has either died or left and only a few dilapidated buildings remain. Ludie and Jessie May know this, and repeatedly foil Carrie’s attempts to escape the apartment and return home.

One day, while Ludie and Jessie May are out of the house, Carrie takes her check and buys a train ticket to the nearest town to Bountiful that the ticket seller has heard of and sets out to find where she came from.

“She’s really wanting to go back and feel the purpose she had before they moved to the city,” Chamberlain said.

The interplay between Jessie May and Carrie is intense, and Huntwork said he tried to ramp that up.

“I wanted there to be a lot of tension between the daughter-in-law and the mother,” he said. “I added some goodies between the two subliminally that complement their characters’ hatred for each other.”

This isn’t Huntwork’s first stint in the director’s chair at the Masquers, but in the past he’s stuck to comedy, he said, and “The Trip to Bountiful” is a very emotional drama.

“I find it easier (to direct drama),” he said. “The thing with comedies is that the timing has to be perfect, how they deliver the line has to be a specific way, how they move…With this I’ve had to dial it back and I find myself sometimes overdirecting like it was a comedy, and I have to rein myself in.”

“There are times that it gives you chills and it sets you back a little bit,” Chamberlain said. “Especially when the dialogue and the feelings and the emotions are right. I advise people to bring a hankie.”

For Huntwork, the nostalgia and the call to return home are deeply personal, he said, because he grew up in Soap Lake and moved to Seattle three years ago.

“As someone who recently left, this is my little ode to Soap Lake,” he said. “Even though I may not be here every day, living and working and breathing, this is still and forever will be my Bountiful.”

Tickets and show times are available at masquers.com.

Cast:

Carrie Watts: Rosalee Chamberlain

Ludie Watts: Jason Noble

Jessie May Watts: Machelle Miller

Thelma: Natalie Vieira

Ticket Man No. 1: Miles Plagerman

Ticket Man No. 2: Virginia Stearns

Roy: Justice Duran

Sheriff: Darryl Pheasant

    Jessie May (right, played by Machelle Miller) tells her husband Ludie (played by Jason Noble) that she wants to get out of the apartment more in the Masquers Theater production of “The Trip to Bountiful.”
  

    Carrie Watts (played by Rosalee Chamberlain) rifles through her daughter-in-law’s dresser in the Masquers Theater production of “The Trip to Bountiful,” opening June 12.