Mrs Coen & God Come To Broadway… Coo Coo Ca Choo
The experience of Odet’s The Country Girl, starring Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand, and Peter Gallagher, and directed by Mike Nichols was interesting.
The show is still in previews, though the many lost lines during last night’s performance was off-putting, in that the show is about a guy who may or may not be able to remember his lines in a play. But that, I can forgive.
What struck me really odd was the choice of this show for this remarkable group of actors. It’s a decent show… but it’s a tiny, minor piece, more famous for who played the title role (Grace Kelly) than the show itself. The story is, basically, about an aging actor who lost his career after falling off the wagon hard, who gets a second chance. His wife, The Country Girl, is either a manipulative shrew or a patient, generous, supportive soul, depending on the perspective of the scene.
Thing is, in 2008, nothing this woman does seems remotely out of line, even when we are on the shrew tack.
And it is also worth noting that you can feel the audience connect mostly with the dozen laugh lines in the show… and the couple of big speeches. But the cast sparkles as an ensemble when they are funny.
Each actor gets at least one bite of scenery leveling dialogue… and all deliver. But by the second act of the show, I kept finding myself considering how much better this group would have been supported by a script from the same period, but with some intense energy. His Girl Friday, the boy-girl redo of The Front Page is what kept hitting me. McDormand can do anything, in my book. But here, she is quite muted. And Freeman is a force of nature, though he never seemed very relaxed on the stage, aside from in a couple of longer dialogue runs. Gallagher gets better and better on stage, where his looks are not as distracting to casting people.
What it felt like to me was the third show in a four show season of a theater company. If we had seen Freeman’s Cyrano to McDormand’s Roxanne and McDormand’s Hildy to Freeman’s Walter and then The Country Girl, it would have been a pleasant evening of theater… and a great short breath before the season close with Freeman’s Higgins to McDormand’s Dolittle and Gallagher’s Pickering.
It’s not the mess that the recent Cyrano on Broadway was. Nichols delivers and the set is spectacular in its understatement. But in the end, the show is just… okay.
This is a season with a lot of straight plays… most of which have already exited, stage right. Survivors include the deservedly Pulitzer-winning August: Osage County and Mamet’s laughfest, November. Many shows were, to be fair. limited engagements. A Catered Affair, which is really a play with a few songs, is about to get sadly slaughtered (the intention is good… the show is missing any excitement… Light In the Piazza without the Italians). Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is black, Macbeth is Patrick Stewarted, and Les Liasons Dangereuses is a Roundabout with Oscar-nodded Laura Linney.
Things aren’t much more exciting on the musical side, with Cry-Baby a possible teen girl hit, but not half the show that Hairspray was, and the only originals coming in are the oddball Passing Strange and In The Heights. South Pacific, Gypsy, and Sunday In The Park With George are bone fide revival hits.
Funny season.
Is Sorkin’s play still on Broadway? I wanted to see it, but will probably wait however long it takes for Spielberg to make it into a movie.
The Farnsworth Invention will never be a movie… it was shite on stage. Well acted. Some decent writing. But not a show in any real way.
It could make a decent TV movie for kids, however.
“A Light in the Piazza” had Italians and is still one of the worst shows I’ve seen in years. When the play hinges on a mother worried that her daughter’s suitor will discover she was kicked in the head by a Shetland pony as a little girl, it started feeling like the MAD magazine version of “Mamma Mia!”
For Los Angelenos, don’t forget that the Trevor Nunn/Matthew Bourne “My Fair Lady” transfer from the National starts today with weekend tickets almost sold out!!
On Piazza we disagree, SJR. I thought it was an old-fashioned, great show that worked in the way Carousel did… pick apart the book and the show is in trouble… but the pieces came together magically.
The play hinges on whether her daughter, who is broken, will have the chance to break free and have a life of passion and love, as any young woman should.
saw ‘cry-baby’ when it played here and was underwhelmed….it seemed to want to be ‘hairspray’ just a bit too much….
and i rather liked ‘the farnsworth invention’ (but i’m a long time fan of jimmi simpson)….
That’s a shame Farnsworth was hit or miss. I don’t really hold Sorkin to very high standards – as long as his dialog is fun, I give him a pass (see Charlie Wilson’s War). Maybe I’ll see if I can get a copy of the script at some point.
Hey – I’m glad it had an audience, but all I know is that for months afterwards, whenever my wife and I had a quasi-argument about anything in the house, we accused the other person of being kicked in the head by a Shetland pony the last time we went to answer the phone.
The Farnsworth Invention may have a long shelf life in regional theater. It’s on the 2008-09 schedule of Houston’s Tony-winning Alley Theatre.
Hey Dave, have you seen the revival of Sunday? I saw the production in London and thought it was one of the best theatre nights I had in years – especially for the performance from Jenna Russel
I loved A Light in the Piazza when I saw it in NYC. Victoria Clark was amazing.
Let me throw in a plug for THE 39 STEPS, which is moving to the Cort soon for an open-ended run. As original and side-splitting a show as I’ve seen lately, and that’s coming from a guy who saw it, NOVEMBER and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN within the space of 26 hours. The two guys who play “all the other parts” deserve special Tonys for their mind-boggling work. As Lex would say, 39 STEPS OWNS YOUR ASS, BITCH!!
We saw Sunday… loved Jenna Russell… don’t really get Daniel Evans.
For me, I kept missing a personality as big as Patinkin’s in that role.
She was great though. And was even better, for me, at the Sondheim event, where she sang non-Sunday songs. Loosened up, cracking jokes on herself, pretty, charming, and a great voice.