The Country House 

Reviewed by Paul Birchall
Geffen Playhouse
Through July 13

Donald Margolies continues his evolution into the kinder, gentler David Mamet. In this gentle elegy to theater life and family angst, The Country House represents Margolies’ entry into his Chekhov phase. It’s a sweet if meandering play with engaging dialogue and movingly rendered characterizations, set in the never-never-land of upstate New York, during the Williamstown Theatre Festival.  And while the work lacks the force and ferocious intellect crackling within Margolies’s plays such as Dinner with Friends and Collected Stories, the themes of wistful longing and desire for love touch on timeless notions.

To call this play “Chekhovian” is an understatement:  The play’s echoes of Chekhov are sometimes so overt, you almost expect the characters to call for the samovar – yes, here you will find an aging, vain actress, a la The Seagull, or an angry mediocre grumpus akin to Uncle Vanya, or even a sympathetic, but caddish rake, as in The Cherry Orchard.

Margolies’s play takes place in the summer country home of legendary stage actress Anna Patterson (Blythe Danner), who is in town to rehearse for the upcoming Williamstown production of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, which, she admits she’s “a tad long in the tooth for.”  It is also one year since the death of Anna’s beloved daughter Kathy, also a brilliant actress – and a sprawling collection of relatives descend on the country house to honor her (and to do various shows at the Festival, of course).

However, you cannot get a family of actors together without there being high drama and, sure enough, Kathy’s movie director widower Walter (David Rasche) provides more of his fair share when he shows up with his new fiancée, young actress Nell (Emily Swallow).  This infuriates Kathy’s still grieving college-age daughter Susie (Sarah Steele), who can’t believe Walter is back in the field after such a short grieving period.  Adding more kindling to the fire, Kathy’s brother Elliot (Erich Lange) had a brief affair with Nell some years ago.  He also happens to be staying at the house, but he’s as bitter as horseradish and full of resentment that he, of all the members of the family, has had so little professional artistic success.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to convince herself that she’s not totally past it, Anna invites handsome TV star Michael (Scott Foley) to also stay the weekend – they appeared in a show together over a decade ago, but time has not been kind to her, while he is poised on the brink of superstardom.  Susie also has a crush on him, but he has eyes for Nell.

The play simmers with affairs that come to naught and longings that result in frustration, but the play’s focus begins to coalesce around the increasingly bitter Elliot, the show’s Vanya – or, more accurately, Eeyore.  He pickles himself with booze and commences unloading his own disappointments hatefully on all around him, blaming Walter for not helping him in his career, Nell for leaving him so many years ago and even Anna for not loving him as a mama should.

Margolies’s deftness with characterization is in good form, with both protagonists and antagonists limned with nuance and subtlety:  Likable characters have flaws, hateful characters have redemptive elements in a craftily three-dimensional way.  Director Dan Sullivan’s staging is clearly based on sourcing out the characters’ psychological underpinnings in the nicest, Method-y way possible. Danner’s Anna is vain, yes, but at the back of her mind is the awareness that what she most fears is coming to pass.

Rasche’s Walter is a pompous, middle-aged Peter Pan, quick to wed the first pretty girl he sees after the death of his wife – but he admits to his daughter that the quickness is more about the desire to stave off his loneliness and inevitable aging. Yet, as the story unfolds, it is Elliot who sucks out the show’s energy:  There’s an ugly awkwardness to his self loathing, which, although it has parallels in Vanya, comes across as irritating and creepy in an American context. He’s also the show’s only source of conflict, which is a hefty burden to place on any character, much less one so lacking an urgent calling.

At its best, the play captures the sense of what it’s like to be part of that most fabled of institutions, the Theater Family, whose members often can’t tell the difference between real and feigned emotion. But there’s something contrived about this family: Mom’s a stage star, dad’s a fabulous director, uncle’s a playwright. Elsewhere, the piece seems merely like Margolies’s attempts to imitate Chekhov – and as good a writer as Margolies is, he has little new to add to a style of writing that has been better done elsewhere.  It’s a cozy little country house drama – but it’s odd how little lasting impact the show possesses. –Paul Birchall

Geffen Playhouse, 10866 Le Conte Ave., Wstwd.; Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat., 3 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through July 13. geffenplayhouse.com