BWW Reviews: Chekhov Goes All WTF in THE COUNTRY HOUSE

Manhattan Theatre Club's latest addition to the genre of contemporary plays modeled after Chekhov (Drowning Crow, The Snow Geese) is by far the company's best. You don't have to be familiar with The Seagull and Uncle Vanya to enjoy Donald Margulies' pungent wit-fest, The Country House, but it adds a little extra the evening to count the hat-tips to the Russian dramatist.

The typically Chekhovian bucolic setting is a lovely bohemian summer home in the Berkshires owned by a theatrical family who make especially good use of it when appearing in a production at the nearby Williamstown Theatre Festival (affectionately known as WTF).

As family matriarch Anna, the gracefully acerbic Blythe Danner's entrance line is a deliciously knowing joke from the playwright. A very well-known and beloved stage actress, Anna is about to begin rehearsals for a WTF production of Mrs. Warren's Profession, using the festival as a comfortable and familiar place to resume her career after a year of mourning for her daughter Kathy, also an actress, who died of cancer a year ago.

Staying with her is Kathy's daughter, Susie (a terrifically wry and thoughtful Sarah Steele) who wears a lot of black and majors in religious studies with a minor in psych at Yale. When asked if she ever acquired the family's acting bug, she responds, "You mean like scarlet fever? Or the plague?"

Also on hand is Anna's son, Elliot (Eric Lange, skilled at carrying multiple chips on his shoulders), who plans to announce to the family that he has given up acting and has written a play. Elliot admits that he hasn't worked much in the profession, but, as he observes, "Announcing that I'm ready to give up auditioning doesn't have quite the same impact."

Two visitors of considerable beauty inadvertently ignite a great deal of sexual and romantic tension with their arrivals. Kathy's widowed husband, Walter (slickly Hollywood David Rasche), who left the theatre to direct high-grossing action flicks ("15-year-old boys have made me rich."), has brought along his new girlfriend, the much younger Nell (Kate Jennings Grant, awkwardly trying to fit in). Nell and Elliot share a bit of a past that she didn't think was all that important but was very significant to him.

Meanwhile, the ladies of the house are fawning over Michael (warm and likeable Daniel Sunjata), a handsome and well-built TV star who is also working at Williamstown ("Where all ambivalent successful actors come for absolution.") and is sleeping on the couch while his residence is being fumigated.

As expected in such affairs, volatile family issues surface, love and lust are declared and there's a reading of a very bad play.

And while Margulies' attempt at poignancy at the end doesn't quite land, his dialogue is sharp and clever, especially when he's riffing on observations for theatre insiders.

Director Daniel Sullivan's sturdy, efficient mounting benefits from an ensemble that works beautifully together. In a sense, The Country House feels like one of those comfortable, well-acted evenings you might encounter while spending a restful weekend out at WTF.

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