The Country Girl
        

   EXCERPTED FROM NEWSDAY- 02/5/09  

    
    By Clifford Odets
    Directed by Frederic DeFeis
    Set - Fred Sprauer
    Lighting - Al Davis
    Costumes - Lois Lockwood.
    Article by Steve Parks

          The backstage drama surrounding Broadway's revival of this 1950 backstage drama
probably helped sink it. Rumors of Morgan Freeman's 
difficulty in memorizing his lines should have helped him play 
Frank, the washed-up lush who can't remember his lines. But it didn't.


          As directed by Frederic De Feis at Arena Players, 
though, "The Country Girl" pushes all the right emotional buttons, 
not to mention theatrical ones. You can't help but care what happens next.


          As Frank's "country girl" wife, Linda Rameizl 
keeps us guessing. Is she Frank's crutch or his crucible?
 Is she the reason his career is in shambles? As the has-been actor, 
Michael Lang gives us no confidence Frank will be up to the challenge 
that unexpectedly comes his way. A young director who's anything 
but risk-averse remembers how electric Frank could be when sober. 
So he hires him as the lead in a Broadway-bound drama. But John 
Leone as the director has his own issues and he leaves us unsure,
 right up to the last moment, whether he'll be Frank's savior or his ruin.


          For old-fashioned drama, it hardly gets better than this.