I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how we can wake up a theater audience: what will ask them to sit forward in their seats and listen, ask questions, in new way? August: Osage County is not an innovative idea. It is not a play that is breaking ground with a surprising way to reach the audience, but I cannot remember the last time I was in an audience that was breathing, gasping for air, with a play in the way the audience did at the performance I saw of August: Osage County. I sat in the back of the orchestra and at the end of the second act of a THREE ACT play saw an audience that didn’t want to leave their seats. Truth be told, I saw this play in Chicago as well. It was a third or fourth preview and at the time it felt like I was watching the fruition of a truly American play that filled the entire theater. I was not sure how it would feel away from Steppenwolf’s home, yet the Imperial Theater was filled with “ooohs” and “no”’s and gasps all night.
Tracy Letts has written an epic play that does not surprise in its tactics or its language, but does in its humanity, humor and tragedy. The play is set in a large country home of the Weston brood in Pawhuska, Oklahoma on the “Plains” as they say, different than the Midwest or the West; we have an acute sense that this house is isolated, solitary. The matriarchs are two sisters, Violet Weston and Mattie Fae Weston, played by Deanna Dunagan and Rondi Reed respectively. The play begins with Beverly Weston, Violet’s husband, (played by the playwright’s father Dennis Letts) hiring a housekeeper played by the illusive and strong Johanna Monevata. What follows is a family drama like none we have seen in a while on the stage. What Tract Letts has accomplished with this play is a family so big we can find ourselves somewhere in it and get comfortable, find ourselves laughing with understanding. But then the moment we get comfortable it all falls apart, and we fall apart with the Westons. The first and second acts of August are spellbinding. Letts has written a play that he admits comes from his own family experience AND was inspired by his artistic family at Steppenwolf (the majority of the cast are company members). The result is a play that has the neurosis of a family and the energy of a family, but its problem is that at its end it is trying to accomplish too much. For the first time in the third act I felt myself and the audience lean away because there are too many family secrets revealed, and there are so many in such a short period of time we begin to feel the theatrical desire to tie up all the loose ends with a bow. Families bows are not all tied, mine certainly aren’t, and I think August would have landed more at the end without pulling all the lines to their most unexpected end.
That being said, I am not sure it entirely matters. That is to say that the play is still one of the best-written family dramas I have seen on stage for as long as I can remember. It is epic and personal and that is not often done well. Some of the scenes in this play made me laugh in a way where I wasn’t laughing at the people onstage, but really laughing with them and in their house. So the last act doesn’t fulfill the standards set by the acts before, oh well, I still felt I was a part of an audience during August in a way that the stiffness of a Broadway house does not often allow . . .
It needs to be said that the performances in this production bring this script to life in a way that is striking. Amy Morton plays Barbara Fordham and takes over the family with the terror and accountability of an apprehensive matriarch and then responds to her new role with heartbreaking neurosis. She is our way into this family. We meet her as the eldest daughter who has left but struggles with the guilt of it, and we watch her painfully pulled between her husband, daughter, and parent's desires. Jeff Perry plays her husband, Bill Fordham, whose genuine sweetness truly makes his transgressions acceptable and human. Her daughter, Jean, is played by the shockingly clear and strong Madeline Martin. With her young voice and adult sensibility we feel in her a child pushed and pulled between growing up and still stamping her kid foot. This is a cast where it is hard to leave anyone out. Rondi Reed and Francis Guinan are the sister and brother-in-law who allow you to see love in a clear and fallible way. The two seem to be connected with a cord throughout the play as they weave in and out of scenes with their squabbles and their references to each other, and their son played by Ian Barford is hopelessly endearing in all his problems. The Weston sisters are completed with the spot-on neuroses of Karen Weston, played by Mariann Mayberry, the daughter with a one-sided view of almost everything AND Ivy Weston the individuated and martyred middle child, played by the refreshingly straightforward Sally Murphy.
The problem I had was with the overall direction by Anna D. Shapiro. Her beats within the scenes were lovely, full and clearly directed with a precise comic timing. It is the overall seams between the scenes and the design that left me feeling this house could even be more full. The set by Todd Rosenthal is a generous open house, three levels high. At no point in the production did the house feel full with this family. At no point did I feel Shapiro really expand the play between the scenes so we felt the energy of a truly bursting house that could really contrast the amazing intimacy she found in the smaller scenes. The set and lighting design did not feel entwined with the staging. The sound by Richard Woodbury was incredibly effective and the lighting design in the third act (by Ann G Wrightson) is sharp and beautiful, but the elements didn’t seem to build or tie in through the whole of the play. After the third act ended when I felt there was still more that could be fleshed out, I realized the true strength and muscle of this play. It could be fuller; it could be more seamlessly filled with the design and the script and the direction, but again, I am pretty sure it doesn’t matter. When you have performances like these, and an ensemble doing some of the best work in reference to each other I have seen, AND a play that surprises you with its storytelling, the problems are insignificant.
August: Osage County should be seen by as many as possible once the strike is over. It could inspire new theater audiences with its accessibility, while challenging them with its complex issues and family humor. I wonder if with a bit more shaping this family could really grow into its house and have a more permanent address as an important American play. I am pretty certain Tracy Letts and the powerful cast have accomplished this even with the cracks shining through because it is a play that feels incredibly alive and necessary: everything we need right now in American storytelling on stage.
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