THE COUNTRY GIRL Reviews

VARIETY is POSITIVE for the most part...
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117936919.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

After two decades in which he was minimally represented on Broadway, Clifford Odets resurfaced two seasons ago with a superlative revival of his poetic 1935 debut "Awake and Sing!" and now with Mike Nichols' staging of "The Country Girl," written 15 years later. The two plays are worlds apart: The politics, richly populated ensemble and pinpoint sociology of the early work gave way to a more sentimental vehicle for three stars in the popular backstage melodrama. But even if the 1950 play is a lesser achievement, the dramatist's singing idiomatic speech and his affecting insights into the erosion of the human spirit still make for enthralling theater.
There may be no comparison in thematic reach between the two plays, but "The Country Girl" remains surprisingly durable thanks in part to its flavorful evocation of the theater milieu, but chiefly to its trio of meaty lead roles, all colored by compelling ambiguities and craggy edges. And in Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher, Nichols finds three intelligent collaborators capable of investing those characters with their own distinctive shadings.
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Gallagher's crackling performance is the most immediately captivating, full of in-period detail and brash physicality, with an expert balance of suspicious animosity and growing sexual tension in his contest with Georgie.

Freeman plays both with and against his innate strength, composure and dignity. His towering presence is reined in at first, as Frank appears bruised and intimidated when called upon to audition. But his transformation while unleashing his improvisational skills with Bernie is bracing, instantly standing taller as he validates the director's hunch about his ability to bring something vital and unpredictable to the role. Freeman then swings like a pendulum between authority and pathetic frailty in a magnetic turn that never soft-pedals the character's dishonesty.

Georgie is the most complicated character, and while McDormand initially seems mannered and distancing, there's a thoughtfulness evident in her performance that lends increasing poignancy to her sacrifice. While the unconventional casting of an African-American actor as Frank goes without comment, McDormand's natural toughness adds credibility to her steadfastness in a mixed marriage in the 1950s.
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However, it's the performances and not the production that are key to elevating "The Country Girl" above its essence of quality soap, and on that count, Nichols and his cast deliver.

Peter Gallagher was my favorite part of the production so I'm glad to see him getting some positive feedback.

The New York Times is negative.

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/theater/reviews/28coun.html?pagewanted=1&ref=theater


Instead what keeps you vaguely but uncomfortably on tenterhooks is wondering whether three of the finest actors around can make you care, for a single second, about any of these questions before the play ends. Sorry to jump to the last page, folks, but the answer is no.

Sure, the play reads like a relic, but so do two other shows from the same period, “Come Back, Little Sheba” and “South Pacific,” which both opened on Broadway this season with cobweb-clearing vitality. And “The Country Girl” is about people who love the theater so much it hurts, which is presumably also true of this production’s illustrious participants. Why else would well-paid screen stars return to the dusty boards?

Yet passion — and I don’t mean just a mechanically raised voice or fist — never makes an appearance here. It’s a law of theatrical physics that electricity is generated onstage only when a connection is made: between actors and audience, yes, but first of all among the actors themselves. And for whatever reason, everyone in “The Country Girl” seems to be operating on his or her own isolating frequency.

ETA: never mind, I'm a little too late.

Updated On: 4/27/08 at 10:10 PM

Ouch...these arent looking pretty. I do agree with Brantley for the most part. I was hoping he'd compare and contrast the similarness to SHEBA & PACIFIC from the same time period, and how those revivals worked Perfectly- and this one just doesnt.

Thanks for sharing, EverythingIsRENT. It's strange how a show or even specific performances can be so polarizing; I saw the show last night and was very underwhelmed by Freeman and McDormand.

It's cool that Amy Adams and Julia Roberts were there!

New York Post is 3 1/2 stars:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04282008/entertainment/theater/a_slice_of_country_life_108459.htm



April 28, 2008 -- MANY years ago, writing in a different newspaper about a different production, Icalled Clifford Odets' "The Country Girl" a "good-bad play."

It's bad because while craftsmanlike and efficient, it's also shamelessly manipulative, melodramatic, obvious and sweet. And it's good for just about the same reasons.

The balance between that enjoyably good and that disastrously bad depends almost entirely on the staging and the performances. The production that opened last night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre is wonderfully on the side of the angels.

It is crisply and, so far as humanly possible, unsentimentally directed by Mike Nichols, who knows how to let his actors breathe, react and interact, and has a handsomely picked trio of stars in Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher.

Odets' 1950 play - even with revisions by Jon Robin Baitz - has a whiff of the Fifties about it, together with suggestions of the film script (starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and William Holden) it was destined to become four years later.

Yet Odets, here towards the end of a rocky career, was impressively - at times, perhaps, disastrously - professional. He knew what they wanted, even if, judging from his memoirs and letters, he wasn't quite sure who "they" were.

Here the whole play is set up in a perfect arc. Ten minutes into it you can guess not only how it is going to end, but even how it is going to get to that ending.

Of course you can say the same about "Death of a Salesman." But no one would, would they?

The proposition of "The Country Girl" is simple - a hotshot youngish director, Bernie Dodd (Gallagher), wants to take a chance on a once much-

esteemed actor, Frank Elgin (Freeman), long laid low by the death of a beloved daughter, by bad investments and, although now apparently clean, by booze and the lingering reputation booze brings.

Can Frank make a comeback, can he even learn his lines, can he stay off the demon bottle? And behind all this lies Georgie (McDormand), Frank's actually supportive wife, very ambiguously viewed by Bernie.

Of all the versions, stage and screen, the one that hit me the hardest was the 1952 London premiere - the text was adapted and even the title was changed to "Winter Journey" - with Michael Redgrave, Sam Wanamaker, who also directed, and Googie Withers. It was all tear-down-the-scenery-and-light-a-bonfire marvelous.

Nichols and his team are less incendiary in intent, but the subtlety makes the melodrama more appealing and, possibly, more convincing. And the performances are superb.

Among the admirable supporting actors, I was especially taken with Remy Auberjonois as Paul Unger, the amiably unflappable playwright, but really there are only three roles that count.

Freeman, who in previews apparently was having difficulties, here seems in full command of the text. He gets every ounce of burnt-out passion from Frank, with the shadowing self-doubts and fears of a shakily recovering alcoholic needing all the help he can get for redemption, while persuasively substituting a childish truculence for the mad anger once offered by Redgrave.

Gallagher's Bernie is also more realistically toned down than most, carefully calculating that odd conflict of feelings he has for Georgie, and here the great McDormand, at her finest, delivers a portrayal of shattering quietness and nuanced subtlety.

These three are all heart-rendingly credible - it's among the finest acting of the season - and transcend the simplistic writing to leap into the reality at which Odets surely, and sometimes not so surely, aimed.

Updated On: 4/28/08 at 06:16 AM

I love Peter Gallagher (OC is a guilty pleasure) and really hoped this production would be an enjoyable one, but it just doesn't look like something I would enjoy.