After seeing it, I wondered if The
Country House were
the redoubtable Donald Margulies’
contemporary spin on the Kaufman-Ferber acting-dynasty play The Royal
Family. For where where that one, largely a comedy, looks at a
dysfunctional but largely supportive and strong family through the prism of the
era’s theatrical types and tropes, Margulies’, though a bit less of a full
on comedy (though it has more than its
share of well-earned laughs), seems to posit how those kinds of characters and
ideas would seem as viewed through a new millennium prism. I did some quick
research-Googling, and sure enough, The Royal Family was indeed an inspiration for him, as well as
Chekhov’s The Seagull. And that
would partially account for the country setting. I think another reason for
that is contemporary reality: these days an acting dynasty can’t survive on
Broadway alone, and you go where the work is. So the house of the title is
located in Westport, Connecticut.
At
the hub of the play is a missing character, Kathy Patterson, the second
generation actress who, about a year ago, died. In the wake of grief and moving
on are Kathy’s mother and dynasty matriarch Anna (Blythe Danner); her near-college-graduate granddaughter Susie (Sarah
Steele) who has no desire to
follow in theatrical footsteps after years of watching the eccentricity and
uncertainty it fosters; her father, Anna’s widowed son-in-law Walter Keegan (David
Rasche), formerly a renowned director of
theatrical trailblazers, now a franchise film director and happy to be selling
out; his new (and too-soon?) fiancé Nell, also an actress (Kate
Jennings Grant); a genuine TV leading man
star, Michael Astor (Daniel Sunjata),
“getting back to his roots” with a Summer production, and a houseguest at the
behest of Anna, who was many years ago his onstage leading lady; and poor,
ineffectual Ellot (Eric Lange):
never able to live up to the family legacy, bereft at the loss of his sister,
agonized that Walter’s fiancé is the one woman who was the great unrequited
love of his life…and quietly crippled by a lifetime of casual marginalization
via his mother.
I
had a very pleasant time watching the play, and I can’t tell you I wasn’t
suitably entertained: certainly it’s extremely well-acted by that ensemble and
expertly, unobtrusively directed by Daniel Sullivan. And I don’t think Mr. Margulies is capable of
writing badly, nor of presenting characters who aren’t well and clearly drawn.
But I only occasionally “got with it.” And I think the reason why may hearken
to something my matinee companion said at the intermission (which is
placed after the second act of a three act structure): “I think they’re all
talking too much.”
I’d
put it another way: Throughout, I was aware of the effort. Having a notion that
Mr. Margulies had consciously decided to pay homage to a particular kind of
comedy-drama, I found myself clocking the tropes and variations, making
comparisons to where I might have seen one
before, where another was an
ironic departure, etc. etc. The architecture of the play was almost as visible
to me as the architecture of the set, and thus, despite a certain authenticity
of insider language and observation, I couldn’t experience more than fleeting
moments in which I was inside a world rather than outside a creation.
Subtle,
that.
But
it can be the difference that makes all the
difference at times.
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