[ theatre > the country girl ]

The Country Girl
Role: Bernie Dodd
Director: Mike Nichols
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre

Gallery - Click to enlarge
Photos courtesy of Brigitte Lacombe

Articles & Reviews

Charles, Katie. "Carnies With Teeth: Morgan Freeman and Peter Gallagher." New York Magazine 27 Apr 2008.

Henderson, Kathy. "Q & A: Peter Gallagher." Broadway.com 21 Apr 2008.

Amodio, Joseph. "Fast Chat: Peter Gallagher." Newsday 14 May 2008.

Associated Press, April 2008
"Gallagher, as a hotshot firebrand of a director who has staked his career on giving the stumbling actor the starring role in his new production as it works its way from a Boston tryout to opening night on Broadway. Gallagher, sporting a tough-guy, Brooklyn accent, gives the evening's most impassioned performance, accentuating the man's fierce commitment to the theater. But then it's this director who voices Odets' jaundiced affection for all things theatrical, an affection which runs, heavy-handedly, throughout the play. Gallagher's character is a theater junkie, deliriously remembering the real-life Laurette Taylor for her legendary acting in 'The Glass Menagerie,' and thinking that the once-great Elgin could give an equally compelling performance."

Leonard Jacobs, Backstage, April 2008
"Gallagher hits his stride immediately and never looks back. Cigarettes dangling from his mouth, his voice a corroded Brooklynese that rides Odets' clipped dialogue at a gallop, Bernie is hardnosed haggler and well-guarded artist. [...] Gallagher is giving one of the finest performances of his career."

John Lahr, The New Yorker, May 2008
"'Life knocks the sauciness out of us soon enough,' she says to Frank’s director, Bernie Dodd, played by the superb Peter Gallagher."

Malcolm Johnson, The Hartford Courant, April 29, 2008
"The Clifford Odets' renaissance continues, blessed by the presences of Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher in Mike Nichols' dynamic and sensitive production of 'The Country Girl.' [...] Working to rescue the once-great star from years of unemployment and dissipation is Bernie Dodd, the determined director endowed with energy and heat by Gallagher."

Clive Barnes, New York Post, April 2008
"Gallagher's Bernie is also more realistically toned down than most, carefully calculating that odd conflict of feelings he has for Georgie, and here the great McDormand, at her finest, delivers a portrayal of shattering quietness and nuanced subtlety. These three are all heart-rendingly credible - it's among the finest acting of the season - and transcend the simplistic writing to leap into the reality at which Odets surely, and sometimes not so surely, aimed."

Joan Hamburg, WOR Radio, April 2008
"Peter Gallagher emerges as the moment, the star in many ways, because I found him mesmerizing. His energy is great, he gives a terrific performance."