Synopsis
Programme
Impressions/Performances
"The Country Girl" is a powerful psychological drama of theatrical life back-stage. It revolves around the efforts of washed-up actor, Frank Elgin, to resurrect his career whilst battling the bottle. The 'Country Girl' of the title is Elgin's long-suffering, and emotionally-flattened wife, Georgie, and the central theme of the play is the gradual revelation of the complex emotional relationship between these two - questioning just who is using whom and why.
The production's biggest asset is the tremendous cast. Martin Shaw, is effective as the alcoholic has-been well versed in hiding his addiction. Jenny Seagrove, a master of wry characterisation, is superb as the once glamorous, now dowdy and emotionally drained Georgie - devoted to a husband she still loves but is uncertain she can continue to live with, and Mark Letherenis equally excellent as the young and intense risk-taking director, Bernie Dodd. Slick and clever staging sees the main set consisting of the backstage rehearsal area of the theatre. When other locations are needed, these are built from sections in the foreground by the stagehands, as though they working in the theatre itself.
Unfortunately, the brilliance of the performances cannot disguise the fact that this is, by modern standards, a slow, dated and rather predictable old pot-boiler. It has much in common with Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," save that it fails to match the sheer emotional power of the latter. In Miller's play, we shared the central character's pain, in "Country Girl" we never acheive that emotional connection. This is not the players fault, the connection between the three central characters is superb but, oddly, it somehow fails to translate to a connection with the audience. Consequently we find ourselves on the outside looking in, watching the actors, not watching the play. The passion is there, but it feels mechanical, operating on a frequency that washes over us unfelt - like a sound too-hitched to hear. It has it's quaint moments, and Odet's uncompromisingly hardcore dialogue does hit home from time to time. But as a study in narcissistic co-dependency it doesn't really work - not least because Elgin's alcoholism, although superbly portrayed by Shaw, is never-the-less too part-time to carry the ring of truth.
Verdict
Worth seeing for the performances but otherwise an essentially slow and dated piece.
Don Gillan - www.stagebeauty.net