When Clifford Odets wrote “The Country Girl” in 1950, it came after he had had a long career on Broadway and a second career in Hollywood. In both places he picked up enough information to write an encyclopedia on showbiz frustration. Instead he wrote “The Country Girl,” currently at the American Century Theater, about a washed-up Broadway actor, Frank Elgin (Brian Crane). It begins during auditions for a new play where the director, Bernie Dodd (Kevin O’Reilly) is trying to convince a producer, Phil Cook (Steve Lebens), and the playwright, Paul Unger (Christopher C. Holbert) to let Elgin read for the part.
Cook is against it, convinced that Elgin’s alcoholism will keep him from being able to remember lines. But Dodd prevails; Elgin is brought into the room. His cold reading of the script is terrible, but when he’s invited to improvise, he’s brilliant, recalling lines from a show he once did. He gets the part.
| Onstage |
| ‘The Country Girl’ |
| Where: American Century Theater, 2700 S. Lang St., Arlington |
| When: Through Oct. 8 |
| Info: $27 to $35; 703-998-4555; americancentury.org/directions |
When Elgin tells his wife, Georgie (Vanessa Bradchulis), his news, she’s underwhelmed. It’s clear that her history with Frank has made her wary of his having a starring role, knowing how the stress leads to drinking. When Dodd shows up at their apartment when Frank is not there, Dodd and Georgie take an immediate dislike to one another. Both clearly want to be the one on whom Frank relies.
That mutual dislike continues throughout the play. It builds into a palpable tension that exists whenever Dodd and Georgie are onstage together, a tension that finally explodes into sexual attraction.
Directed by Steven Scott Mazzola, the production is superficially accurate, but the emotional underpinnings of the plot aren’t there. The barbs that Dodd and Georgie hurl at one another come out sounding like childish taunts rather than true antagonism and intense jealousy.
Their battle to control Elgin misses the fact that they are becoming bizarre substitutes for what they should be: She becomes a mother instead of a wife; he becomes a father figure instead of a director. Most important, although O’Reilly and Bradchulis are capable actors, the sexual heat that must build between them never exists.
When he appears in the first scene, Crane is powerful as the once-charismatic Elgin. After that, Odets created a character who has highs and lows, but in this production, at the end Frank is simply a high-strung, self-deluded failure.
The actors in the supporting roles are good, particularly Holbert as the playwright, who is the only enlightened, level-headed character in the play. Perhaps Odets was making a point.
