The Army Hawaii Readers Theatre takes a new approach this season by concentrating on a single playwright.

Audiences will be able to take in four works by Horton Foote, who received a 1995 Pulitzer Prize for "The Young Man from Atlanta" and Academy Awards for his screenplays — 1962's "To Kill A Mockingbird" and 1983's "Tender Mercies."

But Foote — who died in March after a career that spanned more than 60 years — was a prolific writer of shorter works as well. One of his one-acts, "The Road to the Graveyard," leads off the new series.

Like many of his plays, it is a parlor play set in a small Texas town. Characters rarely leave the room, and the script plays out in real time — making it an easy-to-follow choice for the Readers Theatre format.

The play echoes Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" by its focus on a family that time has left behind. But while Tom in "Menagerie" is a central character, Sonny (John Wythe White) in "Graveyard" has little stage time.

As the play begins, Tom has bought a ticket out of town while Sonny is ambivalent — even to the play's conclusion — about breaking away. Tom's mother is overtly bossy and his sister a pathological recluse. But Sonny's parents and older sister are as nice as pecan pie.

Despite its unsavory title, "The Road to the Graveyard" is overtly the location of the family's house, disturbed by the frequent passage of the undertaker's hearse. Symbolically, however, it is the only trip most of them will take.

Two of Sonny's siblings have left the homestead, leaving only India (Cecilia Fordham) to look after their parents — Miss Lillie (Jo Pruden) and Mr. Hall (Richard Pellett). A visiting neighbor, Miss Lyda (Holly Holowach), has similarly inherited the care of her aged parents. But while Miss Lyda's family fights, Sonny's family is unfailingly gracious.

While Foote's dialogue has a comic brightness, his underlying tragedy depicts slow strangulation by guilt and obligation. Perhaps because she is an outsider, Miss Lyda delivers Foote's most direct assessment — why didn't Mr. Hall and her daddy "drive their children out" so that they could learn to support themselves?

She also delivers the play's recurring mantra, "Sonny will never marry a common woman." While India carries the tragic load, it's Sonny's dilemma that constitutes the core of the play. Can he summon up the courage to marry that "common woman" as his ticket to a free life?

Sylvia Hormann-Alper directs an all-star cast that makes this reading a solid start to the new season.

Joseph T. Rozmiarek has been reviewing Hawai'i theater since 1973.