The Play's The Thing Project
First impressions of Country, a 1981 Play For Today from the pen of Trevor Griffiths and directed by Richard Eyre, suggest we're in store for the traditional upper class period drama. The starry, indeed classy cast which consists of Leo McKern, James Fox, Wendy Hiller and Joan Greenwood etc, the sumptuous location of a stately home and the 1945 setting, all point towards Brideshead territory. But, this being Griffiths, it's a far more political and cutting piece about class.
Griffiths takes his polemical potshots against the Carlion family (which he named after the Corleones in the Godfather films, giving you some indication of what he thinks about English aristocratic families - they're as bad as…