About the Play:

The Country Girl is a full-length drama by Clifford Odets. Once the toast of Broadway, washed-up actor Frank Elgin receives a final chance for a comeback from a hotshot young director who remembers Elgin at his best. Elgin's career, future and relationship with his beleaguered wife lay at the mercy of his struggles with alcohol. The Country Girl is a searing, emotional play of love and redemption. 

The Country Girl is an insight into the turbulent lives of a married couple whose relationship is tested to the limit when a shot at stardom exposes their deep-rooted flaws. The title character is Georgie Elgin, a faithful, forgiving woman, whose long years of devotion to her actor husband, Frank, have almost obliterated her own personality. The life of an actor's wife is not as glamorous as many imagine. Some actors make enough money to tide them over between plays, but not Frank, whose long periods of idleness are punctuated by despair, loss of self-esteem and drink. When Frank is offered a really big part by Bernie Dodd, a young director, in an important new Broadway play, Georgie can't believe her ears. Of course he should take it, but only Georgie knows the struggle it would be to boost Frank's morale and reassure him at every turn. Georgie performs her ego boosting job on Frank under the tense watchful eyes of the nervous young director, whose reputation depends on this, his first big play. Then on the evening of the Boston opening the strain proves too great. Frank breaks down, and in the dark light of Frank's relapse, Bernie Dodd sees the "country girl" for what she is – a magnificent young woman whose self-sacrificing goodness has never been truly appreciated. The Country Girl is a darkly beautiful play about theater and the art of art... how it impacts our relationships and ourselves in ways that are transporting and also hurtful.

The Country Girl premiered in 1950 at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway in New York City. Uta Hagen originated the role of Georgie Elgin, winning her first Tony Award in 1951. The play has been revived on Broadway twice, and has been performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 2 female, 6 male

What people say:

"Here is real and exciting theatre, alive and healthy and greatly rewarding." — New York Newsday

"It's a superb show." — Variety

"…scenes of electrifying theatricality…." — Cue Magazine

"No American playwright wrote better dialogue than Clifford Odets, and this crackling, complex drama about a troubled marriage complicated by the rollercoaster stresses of show business is one of his finest efforts, as well as one of the great American plays of the era." —Broadway World

About the Playwright:

Clifford Odets (1906-1963) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. Known primarily as one of the great American playwrights, he also wrote or co-wrote 18 movies for film and television. He came from an Eastern European, Jewish immigrant background. Raised in New York City, he became one of the original acting members of the prestigious The Group Theater, which was committed to producing realistic, contemporary American plays for American audiences and it achieved the goal – 20 new American scripts produced in the Group's 10-year existence.