I thought we might be finally done with those tragic Old-South epics of the Civil War legacy. The dilapidated plantations, once-proud families, the ruined gallantry, the uncomfortable racial hangovers – but I guess not. The late Horton Foote reported from rural south Texas that it was still working itself out in 1985.

The Old Globe Theatre has a production of Foote’s DIVIDING THE ESTATE, an American gothic rumination on the theme that picks through the leftovers of Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams and “Gone With the Wind” and finds Sartre’s “No Exit,” the one about the three damned souls trapped forever in a room without egress.

If the characters were written more vividly, they might arouse pity at least, if not wonder. But they’re such a pallid bunch of inbred losers that one squirms with impatient disgust.

This Gordon family is hanging on to what’s left of the family estate in the (fictional, thank goodness) town of Harrison, Texas. None of the blood relations has ever held a job, not in the three generations represented. If it weren’t for the weak vitality brought in by outside mates, the whole lot would have been long ago scattered to the winds.

They exist by sucking out the last of the profits from the land and quarreling in the fashion of King Lear’s daughters over who gets how much when the estate is finally split forever and, by the way, can we make that soon?

Foote writes in placid small-town gentility with a frosting of regional patois, endowing none of his characters with anything like eloquence or romance or ethics. They’re either melancholy at the way life has turned out or sick with desperate greed. There’s not a one of them that isn’t stapled to some stereotype.

Since there are 13 of them, director Michael Wilson hasn’t much choice but to arrange them in a semi-circle and have everyone sit still when others are speaking. This he does with such stolid skill that the show seems a series of brief monologues.

Elizabeth Ashley, a lioness of the American theatre, and Penny Fuller, still remembered for her Globe Juliet decades ago, are in there somewhere, bringing polished skills to the family matriarch and her anxious eldest daughter. Two of Foote’s own children – Horton Jr. and Hallie – play the daughter’s siblings with eerie poise. Please reassure me that this play isn’t autobiographical?

The most vivid of the imported outsiders is James DeMarse as a flabby, aging hustler going broke in Houston real estate. Roger Robinson as an ancient black retainer has the best chance at making a vivid impression but sacrifices it in an attempt to retain some dignity. Most of the others are just set dressing except for Devon Abner, supposedly the sane one, and Kelly McAndrew as his decidedly outsider fiancé. No sparks in either case.

There’s a big problem with Jeff Cowie’s handsome, accurate set. Much of the action takes place at a dinner table which he has placed upstage in an alcove from which the flow of passion is virtually impossible. There is a nice, spacious feeling to the downstage living room but nothing much happens there except around the edges.

David C. Woolard’s costumes seem about right but Rui Rita’s lighting comes from nowhere. There are many windows but the glow remains static, like an undertaker’s parlor. John Gromada’s “original music” – some generic country-western fluff that would be snooted by these people and an odd variation on “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean – is a low-grade irritation.

The biggest laugh in the show comes toward the end, at a suggestion of a radical solution to deteriorating circumstances. However the rest of the play is devoted to a hesitant consideration of that solution. Like the theme of outside blood bringing new energy, this radical idea does perk things up a bit. (There’s even a faint echo of Scarlet O’Hara just before her intermission.) But it’s not enough to stir much interest in this listless family endgame.

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