Blythe Danner to star again on Broadway
The Country House heads to New York City after a successful pre-Broadway run in Los Angeles. Blythe Danner once again stars as the matriarch struggling to keep the peace when her highly creative, and often highly flamable, family gathers at their summerhouse for the Williamstown Theatre Festival. The Country House is brim-full of characters clashing in a distinctly (and very enjoyably) Chekovian way.
Donald Margulies won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for his play, Dinner With Friends. This Broadway production marks the Broadway premiere of The Country House, a brand new play by this award-winning playwright, and comes shortly after the play's world premiere on the West Coast.
What is The Country House about?
Anna Patterson (Danner) and her family of actors have gathered at their family's summer home to commemorate the first anniversary of her daughter, Kathy's, death. The guests include Anna's layabout son, Elliot, Kathy's surly daughter Susie (who has rejected the creative vocation altogether to study at Yale) and her widower husband plus his new girlfriend.
The arrival of an additional and unexpected guest, however, throws their relationships into disrepair and they are forced to reevaluate their roles within the family. The play is influenced so much by Chekov's 'Uncle Vanya' and 'The Seagull', that it is really an homage to the great playwright and the characters he gave birth to.