Drinking, Smoking and Misbehaving in Small-Town Texas A gentle bossa nova, the kind Petula Clark extolled in the 1964 hit "Downtown," bubbles through the opening moments of "The Old Friends," stirring a ripple of disorientation in the audience. For this drama, which opened on Friday night at the Pershing Square Signature Center in a lively potboiler of a production, is a Horton Foote play. There are certain kinds of music you associate with Foote - a trusty old Baptist hymn, or a parlor piano ballad - but a bossa nova is definitely not among them. Bossa novas are for swingers, not for the provincial, gossipy churchgoers who populate the world of Foote (1916-2009), the author of "The Orphan's Home Cycle" and "The Trip to Bountiful," and the great understated chronicler of small-town Texas. Yet half the characters in this previously unproduced work, suavely directed by Michael Wilson, might indeed be classified as swingers, and in terms that Don Draper of "Mad Men" would understand. They swill cocktails, chain smoke, jet to New York City and regularly commit adultery, or try to. And their attire suggests that the women, at least, have bought out the designer floor at Neiman Marcus. What on earth are these folks doing in little old Harrison, the setting of most of Foote's plays? It doesn't take long for a bleak, yawning silence to assert itself through the tinkle of ice in highball glasses and the percolating dance tunes. They may dress and talk fancier, but these people are as scared, lonely and thwarted as anyone Foote ever created. As embodied by a juicy cast that includes Betty Buckley, Lois Smith and Hallie Foote, the playwright's daughter, they make you understand why the working title for "The Old Friends" was once "The Dispossessed." Foote wrote an early version of "The Old Friends" in the mid-1960s. It received a workshop production from the HB Playwrights Foundation in 1982 and was given a reading by Signature in 2002. And more than most of his plays, which often seem to float in a cosmic eternity, this one feels rooted in, and cramped by, the age in which it was conceived. A tale of half-buried loves and jealousies that are exhumed when a hometown beauty returns to Harrison in 1965 after a long absence, "The Old Friends" suggests that Foote might have been dipping into the best-selling fiction of his contemporary Harold Robbins. Though this play shows characteristic traces of Foote's beloved Chekhov - including an 11 o'clock scene that directly invokes "Uncle Vanya" - it is also a flashy soap opera about the filthy rich doing dirty by one another. The dramatis personae have enough grudges and wayward passions to fuel several seasons. The recently widowed, heavy-drinking Gertrude Hayhurst Sylvester Ratliff (Ms. Buckley) has always been in love with her late husband's brother, the honorable Howard Ratliff (Cotter Smith). But Howard still harbors a flame for the girl that got away, Sibyl Borden (Ms. Foote), who is moving back to Harrison after roving South America in search of oil with her ne'er-do-well husband, Hugo, who dies of a heart attack shortly before the play begins. Got that? Hugo was the son of Mamie (Ms. Smith), who lives in unhappy luxury with her jaded daughter and resentful son-in-law, Julia and Albert Price (Veanne Cox and Adam LeFevre). Julia is a restless, aging party girl, who soon develops a yen for the young, ambitious Tom Underwood (Sean Lyons), who is also coveted by Gertrude. Though "The Old Friends" has a cast of only nine - the other characters are family retainers played by Melle Powers and the estimable Novella Nelson - it often feels as packed with rivals and connivers as a sprawling novel by Balzac. As staged by Mr. Wilson, a Foote specialist who also directed the current Broadway revival of "Bountiful," the play unfolds with the meandering conversational twists and detours that are always present in Foote. The melodrama factor is heightened by many alcoholic outbursts and by the gloss of affluence. Jeff Cowie did the sets, which include a glamorous bedroom, à la "Sweet Bird of Youth," for Gertrude, and David C. Woolard designed the sleek period costumes. This means that "The Old Friends" can border dangerously, if enjoyably, on camp. You could imagine the hardened and desperate Julia, clinging to youth by her enameled nails, being portrayed by Charles Busch. And the talented and reliable Ms. Cox doesn't entirely avoid that impression, or the feeling that her Julia is a goldfish out of water in the muddy streams of Harrison. Part of the play's point, though, is that these second-generation rich folks have divorced themselves from what and where they come from. They're unmoored in a way that guarantees shipwrecks. "I hate old times," hisses Albert (a convincingly venomous Mr. LeFevre) toward the end. That doesn't mean that these Texans don't have long memories, which are used when necessary for social one-upsmanship and emotional blackmail. Gertrude is the grandmaster of such gambits. And, as written by Foote and played with unexpected restraint by Ms. Buckley, she's a precise and cleareyed study in the arrogance of the entitled rich. The scenes in which Gertrude apologizes - sort of - for her drunken bad behavior are ruthlessly well observed. You realize that in Harrison, being rich means never having to say you're sorry. Mr. Smith is very touching as an overgrown playboy who now wants to be something more. And Ms. Foote brings the elegant, anchoring lucidity you expect from her interpretations of her father's work. Sibyl, who finds herself in middle age without money or a home, is the character most likely to pull on our heartstrings. Yet Ms. Foote avoids obvious pathos, shaping her role with a stoical, fatalistic resignation that is all the more affecting. It is Mamie, though, who reminds us viscerally of the Harrison that was and of the attrition that informs and afflicts every life in Mr. Foote's work. Ms. Smith, who was sublime in the 2005 Signature production of "Bountiful," gives us a heartbreakingly tentative Mamie, made wary by loss and rejection and all too aware of the waiting grave. When Mamie brings up pieces of local folklore that no one wants to hear - like the tale of the little boy who died while dressed up as a ghost - Foote fans will experience a reassuring warmth of recognition. In her rasping, fumbling way, Ms. Smith's Mamie is trying to find the road that connects the past to the present, as if that might make her world seem steadier. That path runs through all of Foote's plays, receding and coming into focus, and always a lonely highway. The Old Friends By Horton Foote; directed by Michael Wilson; sets by Jeff Cowie; costumes by David C. Woolard; lighting by Rui Rita; music and sound by John Gromada; hair and wig design by Paul Huntley; fight director, Mark Olsen; dialect coach, Gillian Lane-Plescia; choreography by Peter Pucci; production stage manager, Cole P. Bonenberger; associate artistic director, Beth Whitaker; general manager, Adam Bernstein; director of production, Paul Ziemer. Presented by Signature Theater, James Houghton, founding artistic director; Erika Mallin, executive director. Through Oct. 6. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. WITH: Betty Buckley (Gertrude Hayhurst Sylvester Ratliff), Veanne Cox (Julia Price), Hallie Foote (Sibyl Borden), Adam LeFevre (Albert Price), Sean Lyons (Tom Underwood), Novella Nelson (Hattie), Melle Powers (Catherine), Cotter Smith (Howard Ratliff) and Lois Smith (Mamie Borden).