Dividing the Estate is going to surprise anyone expecting a typical Horton Foote play. This work, making its New York premiere at Primary Stages, is not the little, quiet and delicate dissection of Southern life and the people who live it that we've come to expect from this celebrated playwright. Instead, it's a southern gothic comedy about family and avarice that is full of well-earned belly-laughs. Who knew Foote could be this funny?

As the title suggests, the playwright takes us to that universal world of family members at their most venal. It's 1987 and Stella (Elizabeth Ashley), an elderly Southern matriarch, dominates a family that lives off the income from her 5,000-acre Texas estat[...]