Tracy Letts is working here on a larger canvas than his earlier Killer Joe and Bug, but he has not left behind his signature deadpan violence, both verbal and physical. The tour of August: Osage County brings the darkly comic story of the crumbling of a small-town semi-patrician Oklahoma extended family, extended sufficiently that we are happy for the headshot-enhanced family tree in the program (the sort of thing that helps us through Shakespeare and Chekhov). Events of the play are sparked by the disappearance of the father, poet and professor Beverly Weston (the superb John DeVries, showing us some of the salt and grandeur of Robert Ryan in his day). Yes, there are shocking reveals and pandemonium, but the work’s theme is in the running down; as one character remarks in the third act, “Dissipation is much worse than cataclysm.”
With such an expansive script, every actor has a moment or a monologue in which to shine, chief among them the headliner Estelle Parsons as Violet Weston, the barbiturate-fogged wife of Beverly. Paradoxically, it’s her dinner table explosion of invective (fueled by drugs and decades of resentment) that sets up her even more effective quiet scenes later. Shannon Cochran also comes on strong as eldest daughter Barbara, who tries and fails to keep the shards of this house together.
The huge three-level set, the Weston homestead with the front wall sliced off (“a dollhouse for nasty people,” as one of us may have said), is impressive, but Violet’s final climb to the top takes so long that the beat seems to lose momentum. For a piece that depends on physical violence, the design and execution of the fight choreography is disappointing. But we liked the subtle flickering light effects that stand in for the television unit set in the fourth wall. And the subtle and nearly flawless sound amplification means that actors can sit on both sides of the dinner table and we can still hear everyone.
- August: Osage County, by Tracy Letts, directed by Anna D. Shapiro, Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, Washington