No one could be sadder than I. Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand, Peter Gallagher: what could possibly go wrong? A lot.

According to Laban Acting Techniques — based on Laban Dance Notation — everyone has a center of movement, a place from which your movement originates. There are four: the head, the heart, the solar plexus, and the sex. When you build a character, you start by knowing where your center is, and then, if appropriate, you change it. It's what happens when you see one person imitate another.

Morgan Freeman's center is in his solar plexus. It's one reason his gaze is so penetrating: it is being pulled up from his gut. In this production of A Country Girl, his center shifted to his head, and not because that's where the character lives, but rather because he is still thinking about what he is doing. The result is that his movements are akimbo, and he spends a lot of time talking to the floor.

I have been a fan of Morgan Freeman's work for years and watched him climb the ladder of industry prejudice like the Energizer Bunny. He just kept on going, and we are the better for it. After 20 years away from the theatre, however, his re-entry is not a thing of beauty. While Freeman is looking at the floor, Peter Gallagher takes on the task of lifting the play onto his shoulders so that the entire first act is nearly a one-man show. Gallagher is not bad.

As the anxious director, Bernie Dodd, whose show is about to go into the toilet because it is missing a leading man, he brings in Frank Elgin and cajoles him, coerces him into believing that he can do this part. He even coerces Freeman to stand up straight and speak with conviction.

As soon as this scene is over we travel to the apartment that Frank and his wife Georgie (Frances McDormand) share, where Freeman is thinking and McDormand is shut down. McDormand's film work fractures me, but as Georgie, she is phoning in her part from some small room uptown. Georgie and Frank are supposed to be married, for God's sake, connected to one another - and don't forget, the play is called The Country Girl, and should be about her in some way. It is in the writing, but not in McDormand's performance.

Under Mike Nichol's direction, this couple is no more connected than I am to the Pope. They move around this set like two actors who have been asked to keep at least a foot apart at all times. We get neither the opportunity nor the reason why we should care about them. The tug of war set up between Georgie and Dodd, as they fight over Frank's best interests and ultimately form a relationship of their own, lacks substance. The war is reduced to a lump of soggy paper-mâché being fought over by two adolescents.