Customer Reviews

August: Osage County

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

When The Stern Librarian saw this show in New York recently she heard lot of debate at intermission (both of them!) about whether Tracy Letts has a written a classic to stand with the best of Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams, or whether the play is a Carol Burnett spoof of those masters. Anyone who thinks this play is nothing but a bawdy of exchange of insults and swears (and catfights about catfish) should read the published play. On the page it is abundantly clear that the poetry quoted in the lovely opening scene by the doomed husband finds its messy, human correlative in the scenes that follow, with language so memorable it deserves to be printed on t-shirts and sold in the lobby. This is a masterpiece from beginning to end, from August to tragic December. The Stern Librarian (I get a lot of reading done in the TKTS booth).

By far one of the best plays I've read in a long time, maybe even since my love affair with 'Angels in America.' Bitingly funny and horribly tragic, I've yet to find one disappointed fellow reader of Letts' masterpiece.

Tracy Letts, August: Osage County (Theatre Communications Group, 2008)

I've been trying to figure out what to say about August: Osage County for a few months now, and I never really come up with anything that works. So this is probably going to be a short, disjointed review about a very long, perfectly-constructed play. It involves a family, most of whom haven't seen each other in a very long time, and most of whom don't really like one another all that well, who get together in a house in the middle of nowhere after the family patriarch, a one-hit-wonder poet who's been trying to finish another book for decades, goes missing. We meet him briefly in the opening, then his just vanishes. From there, it's what Faulkner described of the writing of As I Lay Dying: you take a family and you throw every bad thing at them you've got and see how they react. And the bad things run the gamut. I'd tell you about some of them, but I really don't want to spoil the pleasure of reading this for yourself. The less you know about this play and the characters who inhabit it before you dig in, the better off you will be. It is a phenomenal piece of work, and deserves to be read (and seen) by as many people as possible. **** ½

August: Osage County is literally the most exciting play of the year. I saw the play in early January, and instantly fell in love with it. Which is an odd thing to say considering the plays heavy subject matter. It deals with everything from drug abuse, molestation, suicide and other topics that just by letting you know what they are would be spoilers.

And while it may seem over loaded with serious subjects, it is a play about a family coming together after the loss of a family member and is filled with so much humor, it's hard to believe that it's a drama. Of course most of the laughter comes out of awkwardness of the situation.

This family has their share of problems and they all rise to the surface when shoved together for the funeral. There are dishes broken, marragies ruined and lots of yelling and cursing. If it sounds a little melodramatic, it is. BUT it's written in such a clear, precise way, it transends simple melodrama and becomes something else all together.

My only reservation is that the play is very long. It is three full acts. (Running time was over 3 and a half hours on Broadway) BUT it is so worth it. It is able to cover so much ground because it's thorough and no plot of subject is dropped.

This is going to be a play that will be around for a while. A true ensemble piece, what we've come to expect from Steppenwolf Theatre. It is a Modern American Classic.

I normally don't go to the theater. Can you imagine spending a hundred bucks sitting cramped in a Broadway theater? I feel like I have better things to do and I can't afford the luxury of going to see Broadway shows but with August: Osage County is a masterpiece. When I decided to finally see the show in New York, I was saddened to learn that Tony Winner Deanna Dunagan (the original Violet Weston from Chicago and New York) and Tony nominee Amy Morton (the original Barbara Weston from Chicago and New York) had left the show. In fact, this show can be backbreaking just from reading this play. The story about Beverly Weston, an aspiring writer and professor, who lives with his pill-addicted wife, Violet Weston, in a house in Oklahoma without air-conditioning. Beverly opens the play up about his life and his problems. We hear Violet in the background and don't see much of her in the prologue. The prologue is followed by three acts. Beverly has disappeared in the first act which brings about a family reunion of Violet's sister, Mattie Sue, played by Tony winner Rondi Reed in both New York and Chicago productions and her husband Charlie. Beverly and Violet's three daughters, Barbara-the oldest, married and mother of Jean arrive with her husband and teenage daughter in tow and with a secret, Ivy who has stayed nearby also has a secret about her love life (don't worry she's not gay but that might be better than the truth) Ivy never married nor will she have children; and Karen who brings her fiance Steve from Florida. Unfortunately with everybody and the recently hired Indian housekeeper Johnna who moves into the house all have secrets from each other. Still this show is really about the women characters who are realistic and multi-dimensional. We have rarely seen a show about women written by a man, Tracy Letts, directed by a woman, Anna Shapiro who all won Tonys. As this show goes to London with the original Violet, Deanna Dunagan, and the original Barbara, Amy Morton (both Steppenwolf players) in November, I encourage everybody in the London area who are theater buffs. I'm sure that somebody like Dame Judi Dench could take on Violet Weston but I would have given anything to have seen Deanna in this role. I began researching the history of Steppenwolf theater and the players like Rondi Reed who played Mattie Sue and won Tony for it. I feel like I can relate to the cast memebers. I am enthralled that this play was first about women who were complicated and well-developed. I didn't know Tracy Letts is a man. I just assumed he was a woman from his name but I am amazed at his insights into the female psyche in this play. It's kind of nice to see the men play second fiddle in the Weston home for a change.
Anyway I saw this play which is long and can be intense, reading the play beforehand allowed me to know what was going on and knew what to expect. The replacement cast included Oscar winner Estelle Parsons better known for her role as Roseanne and Jackie's mother on the Roseanne sitcom as the drug addicted Violet Weston. Parsons is incredible and she's in her eighties performing this difficult and challenging role. She deserves a Tony award for it. Elizabeth Ashley (Evening Shade) is playing Aunt Mattie Fae and she does a great job to the hilt in this role. Brian Kerwin does a double duty on daytime's One Life to Live and a supporting role as Steve, Karen's fiance. The three Weston sisters are all brilliantly played and perfectly casted. I was so lucky to get such good seats at a bargain of a ticket price. The play is worth watching as is reading it. I get terrible headaches because I'm usually stuck in small seats in the theatre but because I read the play and understood when the acts ended and what was going on. I felt I had the upper hand and I got to enjoy myself. The cast also included John Cullum as Beverley Weston who is only in the prologue of the play and his absence is largely felt in the three acts.

A dilapidated, one hundred year-old farmhouse on the plains outside Tulsa has been the home of the Weston family for generations, and Beverly Weston, the family patriarch, has long found refuge in alcohol. His termagant wife Violet takes pills, whatever pills she can lay hands on, and the two have little in common and have not really communicated for years. Bev, who once published a collection of poetry, now spends time quoting T. S. Eliot, and Eliot's line that "Life is very long..." serves as a motto for Bev in his life. Bev's Prologue sets the tone for the play, and when Act One begins, Bev has disappeared. The family has gathered to support each other while they await news on his whereabouts.

A dysfunctional family which represents just about every problem a family can have, the Westons who have gathered are the three daughters of Bev and Violet, along with Violet's sister Mattie Fay, her husband, and adult son. Barbara, at forty-six the eldest of the Westons' children, has arrived with her husband and precocious fourteen-year-old daughter. Ivy Weston, age forty-four, is unmarried, constantly resisting her mother's meddlesome probing and her cruel remarks about catching a man. Karen Weston, the youngest, at forty, has brought her fifty-year-old fiancé with her. In the course of the three hours or more of this play, the family, overwhelmed by the selfish mean-spiritedness Violet, reveals and/or deals with their self-destructive behavior on all levels--from addictions, unhappy marriages, and infidelity, to sadism, suicide, pedophilia, and even incest.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2008, Tracy Letts deals with modern sensibilities but writes in the old-fashioned tradition of Long Day's Journey Into Night, Death of a Salesman (Broadway Theatre Archive), and even Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Big, broad, and complex in its development of the family dynamics, the play maintains a surprising level of black humor, despite the level of misery within this family.

As the action reaches its climax, and the various characters must decide how they will deal with the rest of their lives, the audience sees that the decisions that are made are the only ones that can be made, given the nature of these particular people and their limitations. It would be a mistake to say that the problems are "resolved," but they are, at least, "settled" for the audience. An intense and powerful drama with enough humor to keep the action from overwhelming the audience, August: Osage County is a memorable modern day addition to the tradition of Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. n Mary Whipple

Man from Nebraska: A Play
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Biography - Letts, Tracy (1965-): An article from: Contemporary Authors Online

August: Osage County is the best new American play I have seen in years. I saw the production on Broadway with the original cast and I was blown away! The characters are so raw and the humor and heartache so biting. I loved every minute of it and the three hours-plus zipped by in a flash. Anyone who did not like this show has to have their head examined or perhaps they are pretentious blow-hards...My husband and I found it to be absolutely riveting. We would see it again in a heartbeat. And I bought the script just so I could read it and absorb whatever may have been lost during the performance. I highly recommend this show and this script.

You'll find everything except murder in this play: suicide, adultery, mental retardation, drugs, sexual abuse, lots of spite and hatred, dysfunctional families and plain stupidity. Tracy Letts brings together so many people during this family gathering probably to endow each one of them with his or her very own very personal sin.

It's not a problem as such to have a dozen or more characters in the play. The problem is - each of them gets pretty much equal attention. There's no focus in the play, it just shows all members of the family - rather superficially. Yes, they are all recognizable, this can be seen as Letts' strength in being able to clearly show a person in so few words, but I felt rather lack of general idea in the play - other than "everything is so disgusting".

On the other hand may be this was Letts' idea, to have no plot and focus whatsoever, following Uncle Vanya's "nothing's happening" approach. In general he succeeded, showing this very bleak picture of American decline and fall, with the only "positive" person in the whole play being a Native American housemaid (political correctness?).

Here and there Letts's trying to be funny. One of the family members explains why it's important to maintain family connections this way: "You never know when someone might need a kidney." This gives you a good idea of how much fun you're going to get from this play. Don't take me wrong though, this is not why i gave the play just three stars. The reason is - it's not (to my taste) of what they call enduring quality, however true picture of american life it might give.

I now understand why this play won so many awards. This was one of the best plays I've read in many years. THe characters were well-constructed and written. I hope they have an Equity touring company in the future so I can see the production live.

I would love to see a production of "August: Osage County" but fear that it will not match the production in my head. Tracy Letts has written a masterpiece that will put him on a plain with Shaw, Ibsen, O'Neil, Stoppard, Albee and perhaps even Shakespeare, given his tight and flawless ability to intertwine plot. The play centers around the Weston Family who have a reunion as a result of a family crisis- the dissapearance of Dad, a one time published poet who drinks as much as his wife takes opiates. Their grand southern home in Oklahoma is the setting for this reunion where a bag of family secrerts spill out and we see the cracks show through three generations.

The American public doesn't handle a three act play as well as it used to; the temptation to creep back to one's car during intermission is doubled. The intermission is to theatre what commercials are to televisions. (Stephen Sondheim was the first to write a show with no intermission from 1966 to 1970 with his creation of the now classic "Follies" followed five years latyer by "a Chorus Line" and moving to the 1994 musical "Passion", another Sondheim piece that is written so as not to allow the audience to applaud-something at which was hinted in 1957 with the second half of Act Two in "West Side Story"- on the night that I saw "Passion" not one person left the theatre.) Still, each of Letts' acts closes causing the lobby conversation to be hushed, speculative, shocked and connected. The Weston Family is a distilled version of every family and we all can think of some family member who is well represented on stage.

Not only is the language beautifully written (including "talk overs" which are almost musical) but drives the characters to a point where we know them so well that even when the action or their actions shock us it seems to make sense at the same time. The stage directions are minimal-an opposite from, say, Shaw - and he utilizes the set (all three floors of it and the front porch) with brilliance and a beautiful balance. Many actors and directors love a piece where everything that is needed is already on the page and with Tracy Letts this is what you get.

This script is a wonderful read and very fullfilling. It's not just a tool for playmakers and actors but stands beautifully on it's own as a piece of literature. Still, theatre is written to be seen and not read, but "August: Osage County" deserves to be fully understood so either see it four or five times or read it at least once. Not since "Death of A Salesman" or "Who's Afriad of Virginia Woolf?" has American theatre delivered in such a strong way.Theatre isn't dead, it's just become strongly regionalized and though this play did earn a Broadway production, it was remarkably similar to the production in Chicago where it was born. This means that any and all theatre company in your own region is likely to present something on this scale of superiority and paying $125 per ticket in order to see the new Corporate production on Broadway is no longer the only way to go. A good example is the $27 I paid to see the new musical version of "Mary Poppins" in London- a very good musical, but I'd feel a little sad if I waited a year and paid $500 to take my family to see it.

So buy this script and read it, then keep an eye out for a local production in your area and be prepared to be amazed.

Keep an eye on this man, as he is the new voice of American Theatre. His newer play, "Bug" (also brilliant) has been turned into a brilliant motion picture.