THEATER CHRONICLE
105
achieved the embattled consistency of a Vanbrugh. Certainly Clifford
Odets, with his refonner's message, his sad and seedy poetry, has been
nowhere near it. But he had in the thirties much besides: an imagina–
tion for people inhabiting a special milieu with a language and logic
of its own. That imagination is still his, even though in his new play,
The Country Girl,
it is hindered by a design too conventional to give it
full expression. The best part of
The Country Girl
is its calling up of a
special atmosphere, in this case the backstage world of the present-day
theater. This Odets portrays with carefully sustained dismay and a
vivid accumulation of minutiae. And Uta Hagen, as the wife of an alco–
holic actor, is the pure embodiment of it. But the interest comes to be
focused exclusively on the actor's single fate, the alcoholic problem is
made an end in itself, and the larger effect is spoiled. Apparently, in his
forced retreat from the Communist ineluctable, Odets has simply sought
its equivalent in the clinic. And
Th e Country Girl
actually improves on
the rigor of that institution. The hero--played with dogmatic realism by
a Paul Kelly who all too grimly looks the part-is denied any of the
flair and eloquence which are notoriously in the alcoholic's equipment.
And although he is shown as finally mastering his impulse and returning
triumphantly to the stage, it is impossible to believe that he is any kind
of an actor; even assuming that, given Odets' dark picture of the
theater, we care about anyone's success or failure in it. Drunk or sober
the man is a bore, like so many dehumanized alcoholic heroes. Fill him
full of whisky and he is good for nothing; drain him of whisky and fill
him up with "confidence" and he is ready for anything.
F. W. Dupee
