What happens when a washed-up, alcoholic actor gets a lucky break with the lead role in a promising new play? Hilarity ensues!! (Actually it doesn't.)
Although its premise belongs to an unwritten comedy (or melodrama), The Country Girl is Odets's finely crafted drama about deception, dysfunction and devotion. The action unfolds primarily in theatre dressing rooms where the cramped environment feeds the growing anxiety around the unraveling of our actor, Frank Elgin. His wife and his director, Georgie and Bernie Dodd respectively, have the best of the play's moments with heavy doses of dramatic tension and biting dialogue.
On top of a good read, The Country Girl offers great opportunities for scenes between a man and a woman . . . and dang, don't you just love an androgynously named gal?
Characters: 6 men, 2 women Scenes/Monologues: Two-person and multiple-person scenes.
Recommended by: Tim
Also by Clifford Odets: Waiting for Lefty Awake and Sing! The Big Knife The Flowering Peach Golden Boy Paradise Lost The Sweet Smell of Success (screenplay) Rocket to the Moon Till the Day I Die
