Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, NYC
Live Review: 5/28/08
***
At the May 28th evening performance of this year’s Broadway revival of Clifford Odets’ The Country Girl , Uta Hagen’s daughter sat in the audience, transfixed, with tears in her eyes. Backstage, after the powerful performance, she gushed to Peter Gallagher, who plays the part of charismatic Bernie Dodd, that she was twice overcome by her famous mother’s presence having caught a pungent whiff of her perfume, Fume, from where she sat, endlessly moved, in her velvet seat. Uta Hagen, that beloved purveyor of the Six Steps, a bible to anyone who calls Macbeth “The Scottish Play”, originated the role of Georgie Elgin, aka the country girl, in 1950. It’s not surprising that director Mike Nichols and his league of extraordinary actors Morgan Freeman, Peter Gallagher, and Frances McDormand were able to raise the dead. And in more ways than one.

Frank Elgin, played by Morgan Freeman, is a washed-up and sometimes sauced-up actor with a career that’s been left for dead. He is given one last chance to see his name in lights by the charmingly earnest director, Bernie Dodd. Actor, playwright, and producer are ready to get on board with varying degrees of hesitancy, but Elgin’s wife Georgie, played by Frances McDormand, questions her husband’s strength to stay off the bottle long enough to headline a show. But is Frank’s tragic flaw the actor’s fragile ego, which washes down insecurity with something eighty proof, or is it his other love, his wife, who needs him, even though she yearns no to? Is Georgie his enabler or reason to be clean? And is he her raison d’etre or raison d’ennui? The brilliant writing ensures the questions are never answered, even up until the final scene, but pondered with relish as the audience wades with Gallagher through the murky waters of love, talent, companionship, and addiction. Watching a giant crumble is always a heartbreaking affair, and maybe even more so for those left to pick up the pieces. The only truth here is that weakness is the incurable human cold, and even cough syrup can do more harm than good.

The title of the play implies that McDormand’s character is in the number one slot, but Freeman’s layered and heart-wrenching turn as Frank Elgin and Gallagher’s constant discovery and boyish energy make it a horse race between the two men. Although strong, particularly toward the end, McDormand’s performance lacked any endearing girlishness frequently alluded to in dialogue and, as well, in the title of the play. The supporting bits were surprisingly strong, with Remy Auberjonois as the convincingly disheveled playwright and Chip Zien as the snarky money man we love to hate. Each scene was artfully inaugurated with the velvet curtain rotating round the set, inviting the audience to step inside a world as vivid and complex as a Realist painting. A fully realized production, this new run of The Country Girl reminds us that the theatre was once a venerable medium, driven by playwrights dedicated to exploring what makes us tick.

But no one said self-examination and resurrection were easy. “Every performance is what I imagine childbirth to be like, ” Gallagher said afterward, entertaining fans like Dana Delaney and Hagen’s kin in his lounge backstage, “and seems impossible to think of doing again the following night.” If Frank Elgin had been in the room, he’d have raised his glass to that.

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http://www.thecountrygirlonbroadway.com