......And Why is it Called "The Country Girl"?

I went with my husband last week to see The Country Girl starring Morgan Freeman ("Driving Miss Daisy", "The Shawshank Redemption", "The Power of One", Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for "Million Dollar Baby"), Frances McDormand (Academy Award for Best Actress for "Fargo") and Peter Gallagher ("While You Were Sleeping", "American Beauty", "Titanic") and directed by Mike Nichols ("The Birdcage", "Charlie Wilson's War" and Academy Award for Best Director of "The Graduate", Tony Award for Spamalot, as well as Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple). With this superb cast and director, how could it miss? The critics didn't like it. Felt it lacked passion. Come on guys. Morgan Freeman? He could just stand there and I'd be entertained. So what if he missed a few lines. Who cares that he called the character Larry by the actor's real name, Lucas, and in the last scene forgot to zip up. He was playing an alcoholic after all. (I'm sorry Mr. Freeman if I have embarrassed you. It is not my intent). He has such a presence. He's very tall and in wonderful shape for a man of 70. He changes clothes several times in the play so we see him in his undershirt and boxers and wow, ugly he ain't. And McDormand and Gallagher are no slouches either.

My husband and I both liked the play which is a drama about a has-been actor, Frank Elgin, who lost his dream and his sense of self many years earlier to alcohol after a personal tragedy and has been given the chance by director Bernie Dodd, played amusingly by the stunning Peter Gallagher, to star in a new play much to the resistance of the producer and playwright who feel he is too big a risk. Frank's wife, Georgie, played subduedly by Frances McDormand refers to herself in an amusing, self-effacing way as the country girl. There is a psychological mystery in play here when we hear Frank and Georgie's opposing perceptions of what their life together has been. And Dodd perceives Georgie as an obstacle, albeit an enticing one. In this role Freeman plays a lost and uncertain man which is against type for him because he rarely, if ever, embodies uncertainty. He usually plays very stoic, all-knowing characters, even playing God in "Bruce Almighty" and again in "Evan Almighty". The critics are right in that it is not a passionate play, and if anything Freeman does underplay it, but the touching scenes between Frank and Georgie show us that although she has thought of leaving him because Frank's self-doubt has cost them both so much, there seems to be a loving bond and a need to stay with him to protect him from himself. The question is who needs who more, Frank or his country girl?