Review of August: Osage County

While we didn't study this play in English, I thought that it was relevant to the class. Theater is continuing and writing is continuing and it is still transforming. So here is my review of the Pulitzer Prize Winning play by Tracy Letts. I had to compose this for my theater course.

A few weeks ago I had the supreme pleasure of watching the national tour of Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County. It was an impressive ensemble led by the divine Estelle Parsons and the brilliant Shannon Cochran playing the principal female roles. After I watched this mammoth play (a three and half hour long drama with two intermissions) my first thought was: the American theater is not dead. Sometimes in the age of pop musicals and movie stars attempting stage work, it seems that progress moves very slowly for serious plays and authors. After watching Tracy Letts’s searing family drama my hope in the future of American theater is a secure once again.
The play opens with the disappearance of the Weston family patriarch Beverly Weston (Jon DeVries) in Osage County, Oklahoma. He sets the tone for the entire play by describing the pact that he and his wife, Violet, have struck: he drinks, she pops pills. Even though Beverly is never seen apart from the opening scene, Jon DeVries delivered a commanding and sorrowful performance; it left me certainly hoping he would reappear.
Enter down the cascading ivory staircases, the matriarch Violet Weston. Sometimes inaudible in her dialogue—she is revealed to have cancer of the mouth—Estelle Parsons is anything but inaudible in her performance. As, an actor just beginning her journey, it’s incredibly inspiring to see a veteran performer at the top of her game. Violet is at once a deplorable character, she verbally attacks the family that has gathered to help her, yet also a terribly lost character. Estelle Parsons gave a pitch-perfect performance and deserves every accolade she has received in this role.
The three tormented Weston Sisters: Barbara Fordham, Ivy Weston, and Karen Weston were played to delicious and tragic effect by Shannon Cochran, Angelica Torn, and Amy Warren. Besides Violet, Barbara is the most fully developed character in the play. It was incredible to see Shannon Cochran play the full arc of the character. I think Barbara’s character hits at the truth of what no daughter likes to admit: she is turning into her mother. Ivy Weston is played perfectly as the middle child trying to push her way in between her older and younger sisters; my heart broke as Angelica Torn played the scene were Ivy found out that the love of her life was indeed her brother. Finally, the least developed of the sisters, but scene-stealing nonetheless is Amy Warren’s performance as Karen Weston. She captured the flightiness of the character but, I would have liked to have seen more of the vulnerability and insecurity the character has by being the youngest.
It was hard to ignore the loud-mouth that is Mattie Fae Aiken (Violet’s sister) and her husband Charles Aiken, whose husband-wife team foil the decay of Violet’s and Beverly’s marriage. While Mattie Fae had some of the funniest lines in the play, I found the relationship between Charles, and she and Little Charles very troubling. I find it hard to believe that Mattie Fae could have lived with the secret of Little Charles’ paternity for most of her adult life. This family unit was superbly brought to life by Libby George, Paul Vincent O’Connor, and Steve Key as Little Charles.
The supporting cast members and characters were all equally well-drawn out roles even if the audience doesn’t see much of them. For example the rebellious pot-smoking granddaughter, Jean Fordham (Emily Kinney), the Native American housekeeper Johnna (played by DeLanna Studi—a very calming presence in an erupting household), and Karen Weston’s fiancé, Steve (Laurence Lau), and last but not least, the very admirable small-town sheriff Deon (Marcus Nelson).
I feel privileged to have witnessed the emergence of a formidable new playwright and a stunning new play. I think even if the actors had not been up to par that the text would have spoken for itself, for Tracy Letts has managed to create a piece of work that reinforces perhaps the only universal truth in this world: we are all fundamentally alone.