The Country Girl

At the heart of Clifford Odets’s drama is a triangular relationship of sexual power, blame and dependency. Unfolding off-stage in the American theatre of the 1950s, it demands intensity; sadly, this revival by Rufus Norris can’t muster quite enough.

Martin Shaw is Frank Elgin, a once-great actor in terminal boozy decline. Jenny Seagrove is his weary wife Georgie, and Mark Letheren is Bernie Dodd, the ambitious young director eager to thrust Frank back into the spotlight. Shaw compels, first as a taciturn, shambling old hulk with hurt in his eyes, then revealing glimpses, as he warms to his comeback role, of the nimble-footed, charismatic leading man he once was. But Seagrove, though each jagged movement of her angular frame suggests the aching bones of a woman used to shouldering more than her share of responsibility for the psychological maintenance of her husband and of his ego, is too granite-faced, and her vocal delivery is colourless.

There’s insufficient heat for sparks to fly between her and Letheren’s driven, sinewy Bernie – even when his assessment of her as ‘a bitch’ who rides her husband ‘like a broom’ gives way to physical passion. Shaw delivers the production’s emotional coup de grâce, whimpering, tearful, hair standing on end, as he confronts the familiar horror of inevitable, self-wrought failure. Yet in both the Elgins’ ravaged marriage and in Bernie’s implacable career building, it rarely feels as if there’s enough at stake.