The Country House Broadway Reviews

Luckily, this Manhattan Theatre Club production...has the benefit of an expert director, Daniel Sullivan, and a cast -- led by a delicious Blythe Danner -- who bring this crew to life with a brisk, unfussy wit that flatters the material. Danner's Anna is a model of rumpled dignity and vanity, at once blowsy and elegant in her fashion...Yet House is at its funniest and most poignant when Anna comes to terms -- or doesn't -- with her fading powers, and the ephemerality of life. Her daughter's absence is, of course, a stinging reminder of the latter, and Danner makes that pain clear, even while delivering a wonderfully relaxed comedic performance...Narcissism and banality are, after all, hardly unique to one character in The Country House. Still, given the strong foundation it's provided here, it's not a bad place to spend a few hours.

It's not that Mr. Margulies...has forsaken his usual high ambitions...But here, the elements seem to have come from different jigsaw puzzles, and the pieces feel jimmied into place...Like Chekhov, Mr. Margulies is a specialist in rueful regrets and misty glimpses of roads not taken. But his usually astute ear for matchingly wistful dialogue falters..Ms. Danner aside, the attractive cast members register as a little sheepish, as if self-conscious about trying to make ersatz Chekhov sound like the real thing while maintaining the rhythms of laugh-track banter. ..The most satisfying and exasperating aspect of 'The Country House' is Ms. Danner's performance. Because this actress is so good at playing an actress, she makes us long for another, deeper play that would allow her fuller range. As it is, Ms. Danner still commits fully to every trait, both magnetic and repellent, that Anna is meant to embody.

Donald Margulies gets a big, sloppy kiss from leading lady Blythe Danner, who is effortlessly lovely and irresistibly charismatic as the queenly head of a fractious theatrical family in his new play, 'The Country House.' The scribe also gets a big hug from Daniel Sullivan's buttery direction, which slathers a golden gloss over the plot holes and character cracks in his pleasant but hardly earth-moving play.

It is easy to understand why playwrights, especially those fascinated by the layers of human relationships, are drawn to the work of Anton Chekhov...Except for the fine cast led by the formidably elegant Blythe Danner, however, there is little else that feels right enough about 'The Country House.' Margulies...is straining here to update Chekhov's 'The Seagull' to a summer house full of theater people at the Williamstown Theatre Festival...Of course, it is always a pleasure to watch Danner have her way with a big character, even such a familiar one as the shrewd, tempestuous, increasingly insecure theatrical diva...[but] the banter is hackneyed and, ultimately, the crises are pointless. Worse, these people are dull.

...this comfort-food of a play by Donald Margulies ('Time Stands Still') is like Goldilocks' porridge: not too hot, not too cold -- just . . . lukewarm...Margulies draws from Chekhov, especially 'The Seagull' and 'Uncle Vanya,' for his fractious weekend in the country. Spotting the parallels will keep you busy for a while, along with Danner, who's amusing and blessedly restrained in a role that could easily have turned into a caricature. Steele, so good as Alan Cumming's daughter on 'The Good Wife,' is earthy and keen, her character a breath of fresh air in this hothouse of self-regard. Under the direction of the prolific Daniel Sullivan, classy and subdued as usual, the show trots along at a solid clip, dotted with the expected bon mots...episodes of painful truth-telling, arguments and fights. Add a typically luxurious set by John Lee Beatty and you've got yourself a pleasant evening out. And yes, that is faint praise.

It's also not a good idea to have your wisest character reprimand another character for 'sounding like a Lifetime movie' when, in fact, Margulies turns his second act into a Lifetime movie...After Danner's playing good cop to Robert De Niro's bad cop in all those 'Focker' movies, it's fun to see her let go with a bad-momma character. Actually, Anna's not even a bad mom; rather, she's just a little chilly. And Danner plays chilly with real panache...'The Country House' is actually two plays: the sentimental drama of the second act, and the sitcom comedy of the first act. No wonder director Daniel Sullivan can't make sense of it. He has no choice but to open the play with broad performances to replicate what's happening in the cute twists of the overly complicated plot.

Timing is everything. Donald Margulies respectfully raids the Chekhovian thematic pantry in The Country House, which arrives on Broadway in an elegant production staged with customary polish by Daniel Sullivan and starring Blythe Danner in a role that overlaps with her own professional history. But coming in the wake of Christopher Durang's far more illuminating contemporary riff on the Russian master, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, seriously undercuts the usefulness of this engaging, if rather safe, middlebrow entertainment.

If you're the kind of person who enjoys Chekhov but wishes it were more, you know, relatable--a kind of person who probably doesn't and certainly shouldn't exist-then The Country House is just the play for you. Donald Margulies's dozy family drama transplants Uncle Vanya to a cottage near the theater retreat of Williamstown, with modern jokes and bits of The Seagull patched in for variety...The essential banality of this bubbleless soap seems intended to be tempered by our inherent fascination with show business. The play depicts an insular and obsolescent theater world, and exemplifies it.

Regrettably, the action in the play...is far too contrived to make much of an impact...Margulies, supposedly, was heavily influenced by Chekhov, cutting and pasting characters and situations from 'The Seagull' and 'Uncle Vanya' to craft 'The Country House.' Perhaps that explains why the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, of 'Dinner with Friends' and 'Time Stand Still,' is so muddled here. He seems bound by his device, not propelled by it...Despite a rocky structure, there are some winning performances. Danner is a treat as the steadfast and strong Anna, giving gravity and poise to a woman grieving the loss of her daughter and her youth. The venerable actress moves through much of the material here with ease, and you'll be glad she's leading the ship.

The curtain rises on 'The Country House' by Donald Margulies to reveal a snazzy living room -- and you just know things will get ugly. That's standard operating Broadway procedure: Cozy interior, turbulent encounters. And aside from one exceptional performance, this clichéd, but ultimately harmless, comedy-drama directed by Daniel Sullivan is an old-fashioned, by-the-numbers affair...Margulies skimps on character details but gives his creations the gift of gab...The cast proves capable. Danner is solid in a role that's not much of a stretch. Lange turns on the emotions as required when the story takes a turn to 'Ordinary People' territory. Sunjata adds appeal as a sudden celebrity. Best of all, Steele transforms her character from more than a wounded, walking wisecrack into the show's heart and soul.

What went wrong? Manhattan Theater Club, which did such a fine job on Margulies's Time Stands Still four years ago, has applied its usual polish, with Daniel Sullivan again directing. Yet the tone wobbles like one of those air socks at a car dealership: now inflated, now bent, mostly becalmed and flaccid. Perhaps the problem is that the play was purpose-built, commissioned by MTC, and too closely tailored to the interests, if not the real talents, of its star. Neither Danner nor the rest of the well-cast cast (Daniel Sunjata as the action star and Sarah Steele as the Yalie at least look spot-on) are able to get out ahead of their characters, to apply that spin that can make theater people, with their ludicrous vanities and bitter envy, enjoyable to watch. As a result, Anna and the others all just seem vain and entitled, which may have been accurate up in the Berkshires in Psacharopoulos's day but was never much worth watching.

To single out Ms. Steele and Mr. Lange is not, however, to suggest that their colleagues are less than excellent. They are, in fact, uniformly superior, and Daniel Sullivan has staged the play with an ungimmicky simplicity that allows each one to shine in turn-but it is the author who makes them real. If 'The Country House' is a backstage drama by virtue of its setting, its actual subject is how the members of a close family can hurt one another without meaning to do so. You needn't have done time on the far side of the proscenium to know all about that, to recognize how fully Mr. Margulies understands it or to appreciate the seasoned skill with which he has turned that hurt into the stuff of a truly affecting play.

Some plays about actors, acting and other theater concerns can be quite good--a worthy example being Anton Chekhov's 1895 work, The Seagull. Most plays about actors, acting and other theater concerns, however, are not so rewarding. Sorry to say that one of them is Donald Margulies's newest comedy-drama, The Country House...Curiously, one of the reasons the play falls short of Pulitzer Prize-winning Margulies's usual vaunted mark is that he's chosen, as many playwrights before him have, to make The Country House an homage to Chekhov...Although the characters forge through a good deal during the two acts, torpor gathers quickly. Something stultifying creeps in that lends The Country House the feel of a middling sitcom...As modern-day Chekhov counterparts, the six actors here acquit themselves well. To pay them and director Sullivan the best compliment under these circumstances is to say it would be a pleasure to see them tackling the real thing(s).