Blythe Danner to star at Geffen Playhouse before Broadway

Blythe Danner will return to Broadway in the new Donald Margulies play “The Country House,” which is scheduled to open Oct. 2 in a production by the Manhattan Theater Club. But before bowing in New York, Danner and the play will open at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles for a month-long run starting in June.

As previously announced, “The Country House,” directed by Daniel Sullivan, is set to open at the Geffen on June 11. (The staging will be a co-production between the Geffen and MTC.)

Danner will play the matriarch of a family whose members have reunited at a Berkshires summerhouse during the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

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The play is the latest work by Margulies to be presented at the Geffen. His previous works seen there include “Time Stands Still,” “Shipwrecked!” and “A Coney Island Christmas.” The playwright won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2000 for “Dinner With Friends,” also produced at the Geffen.

“The Country House” is scheduled to begin previews in New York on Sept. 9 at MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Danner -- who was the wife of the late director Bruce Paltrow and is the mother of actress Gwyneth Paltrow -- is a Broadway veteran who was nominated for a Tony Award for the 2001 revival of “Follies.”

She won a Tony in 1970 for “Butterflies Are Free.”

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