The Country House

Donald Margulies
March 2015
978-1559364911

“One of the most disciplined and satisfying new American plays to reach Broadway in the past decade. A truly affecting play.” –Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal

“Like Chekhov, Mr. Margulies is a specialist in rueful regrets and misty glimpses of roads not taken.” –Ben Brantley, New York Times

“With a knack for precision in depicting emotional and intellectual ambiguities, Margulies leaves his audiences feeling ripe with wisdom. His untethered finales beg for the audience to cathartically suffer and soar with his intelligently alive characters. Rather than leaving us longing for the past as in Chekhov, or looking to the potential of the future, as in Ibsen, Margulies keeps us longing for connection to the present moment.” –Kate Bergstrom, Santa Barbara Independent

Anna Patterson, the matriarch of a brood of famous and longing-to-be-famous creative artists, has gathered her family at their Berkshires summerhouse during the Williamstown Theatre Festival on the anniversary of her beloved daughter’s death. But as restless egos and simmering jealousies derail the weekend, this family of performers must come to terms with the roles they play in each other’s lives.

Donald Margulies received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends. The play received numerous awards, including the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, the Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk nomination, and has been produced all over the United States and around the world. In addition to his adaptation of God of Vengeance, his many plays include Collected StoriesThe Country House, Sight UnseenThe Model ApartmentThe Loman Family PicnicWhat’s Wrong with This Picture? and Time Stands Still. Mr. Margulies currently lives with his wife and their son in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at Yale University.