The skillful and successful playwright Donald Margulies returns to the Geffen Playhouse for the sixth time with his latest work, The Country House. Commissioned by Manhattan Theater Club, which will mount the play on Broadway this fall, The Country House is a bittersweet take on a theatrical family headed by Anna Patterson (Blythe Danner), a once-famous stage actress whose career was impacted by the sudden death of her 41-year old daughter, Kathy. Grief-stricken, Anna was unable to work for a year. But now, when the play opens, she has marshaled enough strength to go back to work in a revival of Molnar’s The Guardsman.
We meet Anna in her century-old house in the Berkshires (lavish set by John Lee Beatty), where she is learning lines with the help of her sassy granddaughter, Susie (Sarah Steele). Although Susie, a Yale student, wants no part of the theater, the other four characters who fill the house with their presence are very much show-business folk.
Michael Astor (Scott Foley), an old friend of the family, is a handsome actor who has become rich playing a doctor on a long-running TV series. To recharge his creative batteries, he has agreed to do summer stock at the nearby Williamstown Theater Festival. Michael’s opposite is Elliot (Eric Lange), a “hapless hangdog” of a failed actor who also happens to be Anna’s son. Then there are Walter (David Rasche), a B-movie director, and Nell (Emily Swallow), his much-younger actress girlfriend. Having come together to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Kathy’s death, the family proceeds to fall rapidly apart. Margulies’ sprawling, somewhat unfocused story details the reasons for this dissolution. Elliot, we learn, was once deeply in love with Nell. Desperate for a second chance, he is crushed when she rebuffs him yet again. Then it’s revealed that not only Susie but her grandmother Anna has a lech for the hunky Michael.
The internecine jealousies, sexual high-jinks and psychological battles are mostly handled in comic fashion by Margulies, although there are times when blood is spilled. The playwright also takes his time getting to the underlying theme of the play: the Oedipal relationship between Anna and Elliot. The darkness that emerges here is in distinct contrast to the overall lightness of the play, with its showbiz jibes and in-jokes, its witty dialogue. But like Chekhov, whose plays have served as the inspiration for The Country House, Margulies has been able to combine comedy and drama in workable fashion. The playwright has also benefitted from Dan Sullivan’s expert direction and from the superb performances by the six-person cast.
