A Fiery New Incarnation of a Monster of a Mother
The followng is a review from the New York times
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theater2.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/theater/reviews/16osag.html
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
Published: July 16, 2008
It’s really not a good idea to mess with Violet Weston, the fire-breathing dragon lady of Pawhuska, Okla., who presides over a feast of family combat in “August: Osage County.” As all who have seen Tracy Letts’s celebrated comedy-drama on Broadway no doubt vividly recall, Violet does not brook much interference when it comes to indulging her favorite pastimes.
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Raise an objection to that eviscerating commentary on her daughter’s looks and you are likely to find your own being mercilessly dissected. Delicately suggest that she refrain from airing the family’s dirtiest laundry over dinner and you will be subjected to eyebrow-singeing bursts of invective.
Oh, and don’t even think of getting between Violet and the little bottles of pills she pops like Tic Tacs. That would be a sure way to lose a limb.
Violet is a maternal monster on an outrageous scale, but she is also one of the most spellbinding characters in memory to stalk a Broadway stage. So it is good news to report that Estelle Parsons, the venerable actress who has taken over this demanding role from the Tony Award-winning Deanna Dunagan, has had the good sense not to mess with her much.
THEATER REVIEW
'August' is only more intense as it opens on Broadway
By Chris Jones Tribune theater critic
December 5, 2007
Moreover, this "August" is a different deal. This is Broadway. The leading actors are women. As the story of three middle-age sisters forced to return to their parents' Oklahoma home after their father's disappearance, this is the commissioned work of an in-sync house playwright Steppenwolf never had before. "August" won't confirm the Steppenwolf mystique so much as retool it.Letts has written a grand, old three-act family drama of epic scale and ambition, replete with numerous nods to Eugene O'Neill and Lillian Hellman. He begins his play with the disappearance of Beverly Weston (Dennis Letts), a drunken academic. His three adult daughters -- played by Morton, Sally Murphy and Marianne Mayberry -- return home to their pill-popping mother, Violet (Dunagan), to try and figure out why Beverly is gone. Violet's sister Mattie Fae (Rondi Reed) is there too. And these women all come hitched to either an immoral or a dysfunctional man. Or both.
www.chicagotribune.com/features/magazine/chi-080224augustnyc-story,0,7005888.story -
PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: August: Osage County — Deliriously Dysfunctional
By Harry Haun06 Dec 2007
The family skeletons are dancing as fast as they can in August: Osage County, a graceful swan-dive into domestic donnybrooks which landed with a major critical splash at the Imperial Dec. 4.
Rarely, they say, has home, hearth and hell been so hilariously served.
Familial in-fighting has produced some famous American plays, and this new addition demonstrates how the gritty has gone to giddy — from The Little Foxes and Long Day's Journey Into Night to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Delicate Balance. Humor battling for life amid the billowing chaos is what Tracy Letts has brought to this genre, and it transforms this familiar terrain into something quite fresh and — startlingly! — funny.
He wrote, if not sculptured, this opus to the talents of his fellow actors in Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company — and then let 13 of them duke it out, refereed artfully by troupe director Anna D. Shapiro.
www.playbill.com/features/article/113338.html - 55k
Originally posted: July 9, 2007
Steppenwolf's 'August: Osage County' a blast of truth, sin from Tracy Letts
Written by Chris Jones for the Chicago Tribune
THEATER REVIEW
Given his lip-smacking relish for the agonizing unveiling of familial pain, it's doubtful that Tracy Letts will be declared the official playwright of the state of Oklahoma any time soon. The Sooners already gave their hearts to that romantic 1943 musical set within their nascent borders, and nobody will want to see "August: Osage County" performed in the Tulsa schools.
But with this staggeringly ambitious — and, for my money, staggeringly successful — three-act domestic opus for the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Letts has penned a major, not-to-be-missed new American work that eulogizes the perversely nurturing dysfunction of family life on the Plains as surely as it skewers the arid absurdities of its underpinning. And with the help of director Anna D. Shapiro, Letts has built a vehicle for the great Chicago actress Deanna Dunagan, who plays the caustic Weston family matriarch, presiding over a grown trio of sisters who've rushed home to Pawhuska to find out why their father, a sometime writer and constant drinker, has suddenly disappeared. Popping pills, telling truths and exploding her kids' inadequate defenses, Dunagan spits out the kind of brilliantly acidic performance that will be remembered in this town for years to come.
leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/the_theater_loop/2007/07/at-steppenwolf-.html - 74k
The link below is a review from a blog written by Steve
called Steve on Broadway
steveonbroadway.blogspot.com/2007/08/august-osage-county-sob-review.html - 35k
Sunday, August 19, 2007
August: Osage County (The SOB Review)
August: Osage County (The SOB Review) - Downstairs Theatre, Steppenwolf, Chicago, IL**** (out of ****)As regular readers know, I employ a four-star system to rate the live stage productions I see. Four stars are strictly reserved for the best of the best.However, if I could defy my own rules, I'd give August: Osage County five stars. Under the exceptionally sure and steady guiding hand of Anna D. Shapiro, it's that hot of a show. And the direction isn't the only thing that's sweltering on the stage.By far the best-written, best-acted play I've ever seen at Chicago's Steppenwolf -- and that's no small feat -- August: Osage County is ensemble member Tracy Letts' masterpiece.It's mesmerizing.To say it's the most excellent stage production I've seen this year would be a gross understatement.While it would be far too easy to think of this as some modern-day version of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, the three-hour, 20-minute family saga is at once chilling and funny. Letts, an Okahoma native, ingeniously paints a picture of life that's both bleak and vital in the immense, rural area to the northwest of Tulsa where temperatures easily soar in the eighth month of each year.August: Osage County centers on a heavy-drinking poet Beverly Weston (Dennis Letts, the playwright's father, in a subtle poignant portrayal who haunts the play long after his lone appearance) and his venomous drug-addled wife Violet (a breathtakingly potent Deanna Dunagan, pictured, in
A CurtainUp Review
August: Osage County
By Elyse Sommer
It's a damn fine day to tell the truth!.— Not everyone would agree with the high on pills Violet that a funeral dinner is the ideal time for serving up accusations and painful secrets.
Deanna Dunagan as Violet Weston(Photo by Joan Marcus) Yes, "life is very long. . . "(to quote T.S. Elliott, via family patriarch Beverly Weston) and, yes, so is August: Osage County (as noted by our Chicago critic Larry Bommer). But long isn't a bad thing. A boring ninety-minute, intermissionless play can seem endless. But the more than three hours fly by in this terrific three acter a by Tracy Letts, with its bakers' dozen of fully rounded, damaged characters portrayed by a group of the Chicago Steppenwolf Theatre Company's finest actors. Unlike Letts' raunchy thrillers, Killer Joe and Bugs, August: Osage County belongs to a long line of memorable plays about dysfunctional families whose members fight their weaknesses (booze, drugs, depression, adultery, guilt) and each other. Think Long Day's Journey into Night The Little Foxes, Crimes of the Heart, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Death of a Salesman. But expect a completely unique and distinctive addition to this genre. The plot device that brings the Weston clan to Todd Rosenthal's exquisitely detailed three-story house outside Pawhuska, Oklaoma maybe almost too facile, but it works. Beverly Weston (Dennis Letts, the author's father) gets the first scene which prepares us for the familiar but forever shocking emotional baggage to be unpacked. In what amounts to a long monologue, Beverly interviews Johanna Monevata (Kimberly Guerrero), a young Indian woman, for a job as housekeeper for the ramshackle house and as caretaker for his pill-addicted, cancer stricken wife Violet (a riveting no-holds barred Deanna Dunagan). The old-fashioned three-story dollhouse set can easily lull us into thinking we might be wrong to anticipate that Letts will roll out of a barrel full of Weston woes. But this is at best momentary. Even before that digressive opening scene interview is over, Violet Weston descends the circular staircase, a delicate looking woman, whose bent-over walk is as painful to watch as it must feel. Pain and regret have given her tongue an extra-sharp razor's edge (an ironic metaphor, given that it's mouth cancer she's suffering from).
www.curtainup.com/augustosageny.html - 19k
