Theater Review : Star Makes ‘Country’ Excursion Worth the Trip

If there’s any postwar play that represents everything contemporary American playwrights run away from in an instant, it’s Clifford Odets’ 1950 melodrama about the theater, “The Country Girl.”

With writers as disparate as Suzan Lori-Parks, Roger Rueff and John Steppling, nothing stands better for what they are not about than this Odets warhorse, long presumed to have been sent to the theatrical glue factory.

Director Sandy Silver’s revival for San Clemente Community Theatre indicates that it hasn’t arrived at the factory quite yet and that, with the right actress, this overwritten, muscle-bound drama on booze, Broadway and not-quite broken dreams can actually hit on some emotional wellsprings.

Nancy Smeets’ deeply affecting portrayal of Georgie Elgin, the long-suffering wife of fallen acting star Frank Elgin (Ron Lance), is actually about overcoming two big obstacles: as Georgie (who endures and survives Frank’s destructive self-deceptions) and as an actor (who rises above the sticky, nearly unmanageable nature of Odets’ material).

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None of her colleagues (most of them professionals, the venue notwithstanding) accomplishes the same trick--a few so dog-tired that they remind us what a near-dead play this is.

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter, because Georgie is the play, with the others mostly along for the bumpy ride.

In a way, that’s the fundamental problem with Odets’ conception: Who would you say is the central protagonist in a scenario involving an alcoholic actor, supported by his wife and prodded by his director as he tries out for the lead in a bound-for-Broadway play that could relaunch his career?

That Odets chose the wife was his own kind of innovation, though not in any kind of feminist spirit. Georgie belongs to another era, the ultimate Tammy Wynette stand-by-your-man stage character who knows her husband’s frailties all too well--and makes them known to director Bernie Dodd (Sean Ginley). She threatens to leave, but she’ll finally do what’s good for Frank, not what’s good for her.

Georgie is a museum-piece character who now seems a million years older than any number of Ibsen and Strindberg creations. But Smeets finds a way to make her interesting, even magnetic.

From her first moment, Smeets’ drawn face has the look of a subject in one of Walker Evans’ photographs--bone-tired but firm, emotionally denuded but still standing. Smeets suggests that Georgie’s emotional core is hollowed out by time and pain, but what we see for more than two hours is that this Georgie is finding a way to fill it again.

In ‘90s parlance, it’s a recovery--one unearned in Odets’ drama, but utterly convincing with an actor of Smeets’ strength of will. She acts as much through her eyes as her voice (it would be lovely to hear her do Shakespeare), and not a moment is lost in the barn-like yet intimate Cabrillo Playhouse.

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Smeets has dimensions, but Ginley and Lance, though game for their Big Moments, have almost none at all.

Ginley’s Bernie is more like a high-school football coach on a bad day than a hot, ambitious Broadway director. Frank’s ultimate breakdown feels very real, but it’s about the first authentic moment in Lance’s performance. While Smeets has internalized the Elgins’ domestic fissures, Lance is still very much on the surface.

The difference is all, but Silver’s direction is sensitive enough that such differences don’t cloud our own involvement.

Smeets is strong enough that even a weak cast, Paul Vogler’s threadbare set, Ed Howie’s harsh lights and Diane Green’s mediocre costumes don’t get between us and this amazingly durable country girl. Make that woman. * “The Country Girl,” Cabrillo Playhouse, 202 Avenida Cabrillo, San Clemente. Wednesday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; June 5, 2 p.m. $10. (714) 492-0465. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes. Nancy Smeets: Georgie Elgin

Ron Lance: Frank Elgin

Sean Ginley: Bernie Dodd

Gene Fiskin: Phil Cook

Steve Flores: Larry

Joseph Zabrosky: Paul Unger

Michelle Beswick: Nancy Stoddard

A San Clemente Community Theatre production of Clifford Odets’ play. Directed by Sandy Silver. Set: Paul Vogler. Lights: Ed Howie. Costumes: Diane Green. Sound: K. Robert Eaton.