The final chapter of Horton Foote’s The Orphans’ Home Cycle opened last week to another bouquet of critical hosannas at The Signature Theatre. And the best news of all: The Signature has just extended the production through May 8, 2010 to give more theater-lovers an opportunity to experience Off-Broadway’s intimate epic.

The sheer scale of the production is astonishing. The Orphans’ Home Cycle spans a period of twenty-six years and chronicles several generations of three families. To bring the characters of Harrison Texas to life, it took:

9 full-length plays, condensed by Horton Foote himself (with a posthumous assist from daughter Hallie and director Michael Wilson) to 9 hours of drama unfolding over three installments

22 actors (and 5 understudies) who play a total of 66 roles, including several actors playing the same character at different ages

25 different scenic locations, designed to shift swiftly and seamlessly by scenic wizards Jeff Cowie and David M. Barber, with an invaluable assist from projection designer Jan Hartley

143 costumes (designed by David C. Woolard) and 78 pairs of shoes, covering nearly thirty years of fashion

over 40 wigs (courtesy of hair and wig designer Mark Adam Rampmeyer)

1000 lighting cues created by Rui Rita

2 theatre companies – the show is a co-production between the Signature Theatre Company and Hartford Stage in Connecticut, where the cycle premiered early last fall

Part Three: The Story of a Family, covering the years 1918 to 1928, brings the cycle to a satisfying conclusion. Act I: 1918 finds Horace and Elizabeth Robedaux reeling as a flu epidemic decimates the local community while World War I concludes overseas. In Act II: Cousins, staunch, independent Horace struggles with his faltering haberdashery and his mother’s failing health – the same mother who had essentially abandoned him as a child, leaving him to forge his own path with no assistance. Act III: The Death of Papa deals with the idea of legacy. When Elizabeth’s father passes away suddenly Wharton mobilizes to honor a favorite son, but as her ne’er-do-well brother (Bryce Pinkham, cutting a tragic figure) finds that he can’t live up to the expectations placed upon him.

The joys of the production are plentiful, from the dizzying alacrity of events depicted in 1918, to the comic relief of a drunken man (Lucas Caleb Rooney) trying to assess his family tree in Cousins, to a touching scene in The Death of Papa in which Horace defends his son’s carnivorous literature addiction; the son is clearly a stand-in for Foote himself, and the entire cycle serves as a semi-biographical tribute to Foote’s father. The fact that his daughter Hallie Foote plays multiple roles, including her own great-grandmother, just adds to the familial love letter. And someone should give Bill Heck a medal of valor for essaying the monumentally challenging role of Horace Robedaux with such aplomb, and carrying the entire cycle on his sturdy shoulders.

Though rumors of a fall 2010 Broadway transfer for The Orphans’ Home Cycle are swirling, theater-lovers owe it to themselves to catch this astonishing event in the intimate trappings of The Signature Theatre. Not known for resting on its laurels, The Signature is trading one American epic for another as it plans its 2010-2011 season, honoring the work of Tony Kushner and featuring the first major New York revival of Kushner's two-part masterwork Angels in America, premiering this fall.

The Orphans' Home Cycle plays Tuesday through Friday at 7pm, Saturdays at 8pm, Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 2pm. The show plays at The Peter Norton Space located at 555 West 42nd Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues). For more information or to purchase tickets, please visitwww.signaturetheatre.org or call 212-244-PLAY (7529).