The Trip to Bountiful, set in Texas circa 1947, portrays an epic journey. Mama Carrie Watts is, in our current turn of phrase, “seeking closure.” But as she nears life’s end, she’s living under near house arrest. Squeezed into a three-room Houston flat with son Ludie and his nervous, demanding wife Jessie Mae, Carrie has been forbidden to run, to run away or sing hymns. She longs to make sense of her life and losses by returning to her family’s farm in Bountiful – a place where she was born, buried two children and lived with a husband she did not love.

Mama Watts is sometimes forgetful, but less doddering than her daughter-in-law supposes. As portrayed by long-time Thunder River Theatre Company (TRTC) resident actress Julia Whitcombe, Carrie is a woman possessed of dignity and determination, but feisty enough to hide her pension check and plot an escape.

Bound by duty and an apartment that’s too small for privacy, the querulous Jessie Mae is the caretaker for a sometimes-childish old woman rather than for children of her own. She longs to paint the town with husband Ludie, but must settle for meeting girlfriends at the drugstore and a weekly trip to the beauty salon – a small indulgence financed by Carrie’s pension check. The querulous and demanding Jessie Mae is made almost sympathetic by actress Valerie Haugen, who was last seen on Thunder River’s stage as Blanche DuBois in The Streetcar named Desire.

Caught between these two bickering women is the deflated Ludie, who is quite not up to playing referee. He’s trying to be a good provider, and in our contemporary turn of phrase, “to stay present.” When Carrie recalls Bountiful and begs to return there, Ludie responds, “Mama, I want to stop remembering. It don’t do no good to remember.

In an era when women were forced to live through their men, Ludie has proved a disappointment to them and he knows it. “I haven’t made much of a life for you – either of you,” he says.

Brad Moore plays Ludie with an air of resignation. He’s a man poised on precipice – he confides that he’s newly working after a two-year illness that cost him nearly everything, a crisis that’s sure to resonate with many in the audience – and he’s working up the courage to ask for a raise. He tells Jessie Mae that she can buy a new dress. But when Carrie announces, “I can’t stay here anymore”, he exclaims, “Don’t tell me that, Mama. I can’t do anything about it. I can’t even make a living.”

Of course, that’s not the end of it. Mama Watts is determined to return home to the ironically named Bountiful, a “played out” town that is disappearing from both the bus route and the landscape.

Author Horton Foote, who also wrote the screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird, gave us Bountiful as a stand-in for home and family ideals writ large. His dramas, which earned a Pulitzer Prize and two Academy Awards, were mostly set in small Texas towns. Like the works of Tennessee Williams and Thomas Wolfe, his dramas were epigrammatic. As small-towns like Bountiful gave way to urbanization, none of us in America could go home again.

Carrie’s furtive bus trip home brings her in contact with a series of strangers: Newlywed bus companion Thelma, sweetly portrayed by Ariel Gilman, three ticket agents (Tripp Watts, Olivia Savard and Lana Karp), and a local sheriff, portrayed by Gerald Delisser. Nearing the end of her life, Carrie, like Blanche DuBois, must depend on the kindness of strangers to help her toward her destination.

Following A Streetcar Named Desire in the Thunder River Theatre’s season, The Trip to Bountiful invites comparisons. Both plays grow out of the conflict of childless couples whose apartments are invaded by an unwelcome relative. TRTC Director Lon Winston, who directed and designed Bountiful, says he chooses plays that will “be in dialog.” He seeks to “create a feeling for a historical time, but more importantly, to engage the audience with themes that resonate right now.”

Bountiful succeeds on all counts. The formality of manners and language and the costuming evoke an era. The Watts’ apartment -- ladder-back chairs, a narrow kitchen, scuffed dressers, a double bed – speaks of hard times. The women wear shirtwaist dresses, but don hats to travel. Carrie’s is a navy blue cloche with mattelasse details, just what a hymn-singing 1940’s matron would have worn.

Winston’s staging is spare but evocative. The austerity of the bus station – a wooden bench and fold-up ticket counter – is almost a relief after the cluttered apartment. Bountiful itself is conjured up not by props, but by sounds and by Julia Whitcombe’s commanding stage presence. Whitcombe is nearly Carrie’s age, and when her gaze, penetrates the darkness, it’s almost enough to make us all believe in her epic destination.