Images: Cast of August: Osage County and production poster [www.time.com, http://www.playbill.com/, http://www.verbosecoma.com/]
After a good friend saw this show in June and had the unbelievable chance to go backstage and meet star Estelle Parsons, I knew I had to put it on my must-see list (nevermind it won this year's Pulitzer Prize for drama!) It did not disappoint, providing me with over 3 hours of pure dramatic fun in the form of a black comedy about one of the more dysfunctional families ever to grace the American stage. The Weston family of Osage County, Oklahoma live in a large three story old-fashioned wooden farmhouse outside of Tulsa, where patriarch Beverly has had a so-so career as an English professor at the university. We meet him in a long opening monologue about his life, his drunkeness, his wife and daughters, to a mostly silent native-American young woman named Johnna, whom he is hiring as a housekeeper and cook. Johnna will have her work cut out for her, as Beverly promptly goes missing and turns up dead...a planned suicide. We soon meet the three daughters, two sons-in-law and one grand-daughter, and an aunt, uncle and cousin, who return home for their father/brother-in-law/uncle's funeral and to comfort their difficult mother/sister/aunt Violet. Violet, a formidable pill-popper (echoes of the mother in O'Neill's Long Day's Journey), is both unbelievably vicious and unspeakably pathetic as she sets out to attack each of her three daughters and other assorted characters throughout the play. This culminates in a funeral dinner scene that must be seen to be believed, where Violet manages to reduce all of her daughters either to tears or rage (or both), even to physical assault.
At the heart of the play is the Westons' oldest daughter Barbara, a strong and intelligent woman who watches and does her best to intervene as her life falls apart around her. Her husband is screwing a student, her daughter is 14 and up to no good, her beloved father has offed himself and her mother infuriates and sucks the life out of her. Her sisters don't fare much better: Ivy is the only one who's stayed nearby and her life has been a lonely disappointment (until she falls for her sweet but ineffectual cousin Little Charles); Karen has moved to Florida and become a real estate agent whose desperate search for love has led her to a very suspect choice. The play ends with each and every character finally finding the strength to walk away from this toxic place, with Barbara being the very last one to leave her mother, without a word. The play's final moments show a bewildered and frightened Violet searching the house for her absent family, ending up comforted in the arms of Johnna, the caregiver Beverly hired for this very purpose.
Playwright Tracy Letts and this production from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre--without a doubt one of the very best theatre companies in America--have crafted a wonderful piece of theatre. There is never a dull moment throughout this long play, and each scene crackles along with the energy emanated by all these spectactularly unhappy people. Revelations appear, confessions are offered, recriminations are fired and this cast and their director Anna D. Shapiro are up to all of them. I was surprised by how funny the play is, how often I found myself laughing and being appalled at the same moment. Is it a great play? I think not: the cast is too large and unwieldy for us to really dive deeply into individual psychologies and some plot turns seem added in by the playwright simply for the shock/fun factor (potential incest and underage sexual assault being the most egregious examples). If the play was stripped down a bit and the more Gothic elements excised, we might then have something to hold up against far greater American plays about unhappy families: Long Day's Journey, Glass Menagerie, Death of a Salesman or All My Sons (the latter is in previews on Broadway), Buried Child, not to mention Chekov and Ibsen. I saw Pinter's The Birthday Party in its Broadway revival production last December; now there's a play about a dysfunctional family for you!
It is difficult to mention stand-out performances as this is such an ensemble piece, but the trio of daughters are all Steppenwolf ensemble members and it shows. What a treat to be a long-term member of such a strong company, where the quality of acting is so high. Amy Morton as Barbara carries off a gruelling role with a blend of fury, grief and vulnerability. Estelle Parsons plays Violet as seemingly mild, but with a serpent's tongue, plus she has comic physicality and timing that make the most of her role. The men have smaller roles in this female-dominated play (a rarity!), but I really enjoyed the work of Robert Foxworth as Uncle Charlie, Frank Wood as Barbara's straying spouse, Brian Kerwin as Karen's creepy fiance and Jim True-Frost as the damaged but hopeful cousin Little Charlie. The openwork set design by Todd Rosenthal is both attractive and effective.
Estelle Parsons stepped forward during our ovation at curtain call to tell us that Paul Newman had died that morning at his home in Connecticut at the age of 83. He met his future wife Joanne Woodward onstage in the very theatre we were in---Broadway's Music Box Theatre---in the premiere production of William Inge's Picnic in 1951. She told us that the cast had agreed to dedicate their performances that day to his memory. No doubt the great Newman would have enjoyed (as much as I did) every minute.
