The Country Girl
Opening Night: April 27, 2008
Closing: July 20, 2008
Theater: Jacobs Theatre
Clifford Odets’ rarely performed play, which premiered in 1950, is revived with a stellar cast, including Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher, directed by Mike Nichols. A washed-up actor is given a final shot at redemption, but his drinking threatens to derail things. Can his put-upon wife save the situation, or is she the cause of it?
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April 27, 2008
"A single breath of suspense, as faint as a half-stifled sigh, occasionally stirs the inert revival of Clifford Odets’s Country Girl, which opened on Sunday night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater."
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April 27, 2008
"Forget reports of real backstage drama at the revival of Clifford Odets’ 1950 backstage drama, The Country Girl. Whatever troubles did or did not propel Mike Nichols’ staging to last night’s opening – including a star unable to remember lines and a director willing to cut entire scenes – the result is a subtle, engrossing and deeply straightforward shaping of a far-from-perfect script."
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April 27, 2008
"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."
READ THE REVIEWApril 27, 2008
"Two Oscar-winning stars, an actor known from TV and film, an acclaimed director and a Clifford Odets classic about second chances and redemption. What does all that add up to? Not as much as you’d expect."
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April 27, 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."
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April 27, 2008
"These days, when Mike Nichols chooses to direct a play, it’s exciting news. One of the absolute best in his field over the past 40 years, he hasn’t steered a straight play on Broadway since 1992 and the movie-star-studded Death and the Maiden. So there were great expectations when it was revealed he would helm a revival of Clifford Odets’ 1950 backstage drama The Country Girl, and oversee another trio of movie names: namely Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand, and Peter Gallagher."
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