[An English-born critic, Barnes is the author and editor of several books about the performing arts. In the following favorable review, he discusses the theme of self-delusion in The Young Man from Atlanta.]

Things change suddenly, and with those changes, a life can unfurl in odd shapes, odd shapes casting odder shadows; as we recognize what we took to be true as not quite what we first thought. This is the world of playwright Horton Foote, whose plays are domestic variations on a common theme of relationships, man with his world, people with people, family with family.

The things that happen in that world are always on a human scale of possibility and disappointment. The latest variations are in The Young Man From Atlanta, given its world premiere this weekend at the Kampo Cultural Center by the Signature Theater Company as part of its season-long Horton Foote retrospective.

The play opens up with a dense slice of exposition, worthy of Ibsen or Arthur Miller.

In short order we learn that 64 year-old Will Kidder, chief executive with a wholesale produce company, is besotted with "wanting the biggest and the best," has just bought a $200,000 house (the time, by the way, is 1950; the place, Houston, Texas), has recently been diagnosed with a heart condition, and is still mourning the recent death by drowning of his 39-year-old son, which he reluctantly suspects was a suicide.

"I'm a realist," he says.

No sooner have we absorbed all this information when: bang! Out of a clearish blue sky, the owner of the company comes in, and after a minimum of throat-clearing politeness, fires Will, with three months notice. Will says he will leave at once, and determines to start up his own company.

But nothing is quite as it seems. The devoted office protégé who has been sympathetically listening to Will's troubles is, in fact, the new executive selected to supplant him. The banks, with whom he presumed to have close connections, refuse to lend him money.

And there is, above all, the mysterious way his son lived and died, and that title character The Young Man From Atlanta, whom we never meet, but is destined to play a key role in Will's life.

You see, Will really doesn't know his wife, or even himself—they have wrapped themselves within a cocoon of tiny lies, and now with Will's disaster everything starts to unravel. Is Will really a realist, or is that to be his final illusion?

Most playwrights succeed in making melodrama out of drama; it is Foote's particular skill, reversing the process, to make drama out of melodrama.

His situations are often highly colored—obvious hubris, far-flung falls, deceptions, heart attacks—the only subtle thing about them being the low-keyed and realistic fashion with which they are faced.

Tone is everything, because without the right tone Foote's inner truth—that credibility coming from real people reacting to real events—will be lost.

The director Peter Masterson has done a beautifully layered and textured job. The acting is fine, particularly from a wonderful Ralph Waite as the blustering, self-deluded Will, and Carlyn Glynn as his weak and wavering toy-doll of a 60-year-old wife.

Here is a simple, immensely satisfying play, crafted with elegance, alive with feeling, holding a mirror up if not to nature at least to the next best thing, our concept of nature. Not to be missed.