The Tony award-winning production of Horton Foote’s play “The Trip to Bountiful” will be adapted for television. Lifetime will air the play, which was originally written for TV in 1953, next year.
“Bountiful” tells the deceptively simple story of Carrie Watts, an old woman living uncomfortably with her overprotective son, Ludie, and his high-maintenance wife, Jessie Mae, in a cramped Houston apartment. Carrie begs Ludie to take her back to her hometown of Bountiful and when he won’t, makes a break for it and hops a bus. Her recollections of a lost childhood achieve a kind of poetry and the role is a proven awards-winner. Cicely Tyson, who famously played a 110-year-old former slave in the landmark CBS TV-movie “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” won a Best Actress Tony for her Broadway performance in “Bountiful.’ Geraldine Page won a 1986 Best Actress Oscar in the film adaptation.
Vanessa Williams, who co-starred on Broadway with Tyson, will reprise her role as Jessie Mae. The new additions to the cast are Blair Underwood as Ludie and Keke Palmer as Thelma, a young woman who helps Carrie escape.