There's always a danger that accompanies critical acclaim. And when the acclaim is as universal as that which has been lavished upon August: Osage County, the danger is magnified tenfold. It is the danger of expectation.
Since its premiere in Chicago in 2007, Tracy Letts' August: Osage County has won a Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award... in short, the works. The play tells the story of a sprawling and dysfunctional Oklahoma family who reassemble upon the disappearance of patriarch Beverly Weston. The alcoholic Beverly hires a Native American housekeeper, Johnna, and then buggers off, leaving the family to gather round his pill-popping wife Violet. The whole lot of them are a complete mess of egos, secrets, intellects, and what one might term 'issues'.
There's Violet's overweight sister Mattie Fae, her laid-back husband Charlie, and their inept son Little Charlie. Then there's the three Weston daughters: Barbara (a mass of therapy speak, academia and rage) her husband Bill who's boning one of his students, and their precocious pot-smoking 14 year-old daughter Jean. Ivy is the middle daughter. She's never left Oklahoma and she's having a clandestine affair with Little Charlie (her first cousin). Last is Karen, the youngest daughter, recently engaged to dodgy businessman Steve, who also smokes pot and tries to molest the 14 year-old Jean.
OK, so we've got alcoholism and drug addiction, racism, incest, infidelity and paedophilia. Add to this the intense heat of Oklahoma, the tragic circumstances, and the claustrophobic nature of the action. Sounds like fun huh? But August: Osage County is saved from becoming one of those 'let's deal with some issues' plays, mainly because it's bloody funny.
I think expectation hinders Act One: as we enter the first of two intervals, the audience can appreciate that this is a 'good play' but are yet to be fully engrossed, it seems. It is in Act Two that we are completely grabbed, and never put down thereafter. Perhaps there's something about the formal structures of mourning that allows the humour inherent in madness to really come into its own.
Act Two is a set-piece formal dinner taking place after Beverly's funeral. Violet pops lots of pills and trains her ire and sniping tongue on each daughter in turn. It's such a tense scene, ever about to boil over into violence. But it's also hilarious. Little Charlie spills his mom's casserole, while his Dad feigns a heart attack. Somehow this angry, weird, manic family is just so funny. It's the language I think, the creativity of the swearing, the brutal honesty that the English can never do, and those wonderful Oklahoma accents.
The set is a fantastic dolls' house affair, the performances are pretty much all brilliant (particularly Paul Vincent O'Connor as Charlie and Deanna Dunagan as the critically unstable Violet), the script is razor-sharp, and there are some truly poignant moments. The last scene sees Violet reduced to a whimpering loony, wandering the suddenly cavernous house in search of Johnna, the only other person left.
Something I notice about half way through is that every time a character speaks, you absolutely agree with what they're saying. It is as soon as they stop that you realise the flaws in their argument and the ridiculousness of their neuroses. It is this that prevents the action from being mere spectacle. And it is this that causes the burden of expectation to dissipate beneath the bright light of brilliance.
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