"A tremendous achievement in American playwriting: a tragicomic populist portrait of a tough land and a tougher people."-Time Out New York
"Tracy Letts' August: Osage County is what O'Neill would be writing in 2007. Letts has recaptured the nobility of American drama's mid-century heyday while still creating something entirely original."-New York magazine
One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent Broadway history, August: Osage County is a portrait of the dysfunctional American family at its finest-and absolute worst. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed. The three-act, three-and-a-half-hour mammoth of a play combines epic tragedy with black comedy, dramatizing three generations of unfulfilled dreams and leaving not one of its thirteen characters unscathed. After its sold-out Chicago premiere, the play has electrified audiences in New York since its opening in November 2007.
Tracy Letts is the author of Killer Joe, Bug, and Man from Nebraska, which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His plays have been performed throughout the country and internationally. A performer as well as a playwright, Letts is a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where August: Osage County premiered.
Eh The Broadway performance features scintillating acting, a gorgeous set, and plenty of witty one-liners... but a hollow soul.
Of course, the play is meant to be existential, but the trouble is that one leaves the theater wondering, "What is the point of this play?"(Then again, if our existence is ultimately meaningless and unable to have meaning carved into it, perhaps this drama has been surreptitiously profound in its utter lack of direction.)
At the end of the day, the drama is not engaging; there is no "drama" to this drama, no conflict to be wrestled with, just an endless series of sometimes interesting, sometimes funny, conflicts that add up to nothing. There are worse ways to spend an evening, or $120. But classic drama, this is not.
When our desire for control gets out of control... "August: Osage County" is a long, absorbing, tragic and terrifying play, masterfully conceived and exciting to read. It is the chronicle of how an extended family deals with the disappearance of its patriarch, Beverly Weston, a poet whose presence radiated calm and warmth to everyone else in the Weston clan. As the Westons gather to await news and to support Beverly's wife, Violet, they begin to face their own fears and problems and they do not like what they see. Violet seems to take the disappearance the hardest: she immediately intensifies her embarrassing habit of popping pills and thus spews insults and truths that make everyone uncomfortable. But others have their own issues. Barbara, Beverly's daughter, is separating from her husband, Bill. Ivy, another one of Beverly's daughters, has finally found a man but is unsure what the rest of the family will think. And Karen, the third daughter, has a fiancé who may not be as faithful as she thinks. As the Westons face the reality of Beverly's disappearance and their other problems intensify, each member of the family tries obsessively to obtain some sort of harmony. But their need for control, for some tidiness and comfort in their own souls, leads them to do awful things. And this sad truth also plays a part in Beverly's disappearance. In the end, only the calm Native American housekeeper, Johnna, reigns. But this does not ruin the story, for it almost seems doomed from the start. It's a fascinating (and sobering) ride to see these Westons self-destruct.
I'm missing something here I follow the goings-on on Broadway fairly closely, attend theater regularly in Los Angeles, and have recently started buying scripts of the latest plays - especially Tony and Pulitzer Prize winners. I am not particularly educated when it comes to the structure or the art of playwrighting. But I know when I find something inspiring and uplifting. And I must be missing something here. I would imagine the performances of the recent Broadway cast of this play were outstanding, etc. But I somehow fail to see how 3 hours plus of family members with all kinds of crazy problems cussing at each other is inspiring. This play, even though very different in style and content, left me feeling much like how I felt after recently sitting through "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff" - what's the point? OK, I'm shallow, but I think there are better things to spend one's energy and focus on.
"Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed." 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 Bug Killer Joe, a Play Biography - Letts, Tracy (1965-): An article from: Contemporary Authors Online
Cliche By now, the over-the-top dysfunctional family is almost a cliche, but this is an apt vehicle for many of the tired characterizations in this play: the "wiser-than-all" native American who manages to stand above all the muck; the dumb sister with the sleezeball latest boyfriend; the pot-smoking teen; the pretentious academic who is having an affair with a student.
While the play was entertaining, it was more melodrama than drama. I left thinking, "What was the point of this?" To be fair, I do think I came up with an answer. I believe the playwright is asking the question, "What does 'family' mean?" The play explores some answers to that.
I do not think this play was worthy of a Pulitzer prize or the $102 ticket price that I paid to see it. As I mentioned, it was entertaining, but it's not a play that I'll remember for years to come.
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