AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY Reviews

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 7:18pm

Word of Mouth is a Rave:

Tom: "One of the best plays I've seen in a really long time... it's never boring."

Smiti: "It's a dark comedy, and for those people who like that, I would highly recommend it."

Julie: "Anybody who's willing to give a legitimate play a shot should go see this... it really delivers."

http://www.broadway.com/gen/general.aspx?ci=557557

Updated On: 12/4/07 at 07:18 PM

[InfiniteTheaterFrenzy]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 7:25pm

I have my fingers crossed... I want this show to get RAVES.

[jaystarr]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 7:28pm

crazy me.. I have not seen the show yet.. but I think I ALREADY LIKE IT !!

and where's Margo?

J*

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 7:30pm

Talkin' Broadway is Mixed-to-Positive:

"Forget about global warming or bird flu - the biggest threat to Americans, at least as Tracy Letts sees it, is a disease called "the plains." Described as "some spiritual affliction, like the blues," this malady might not rate front-page headlines, but it can be as devastating to the psyche as a tornado is to the Midwest landscape. And once the mind is affected, can the heart and body be far behind? Watching this dread contagion spread through, and methodically dissolve, the members and friends of the Weston family of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, is the chief joy of Letts's carefully vibrant new play, August: Osage County.

But it's not merely the barren country's effects on people's souls that's of the most interest here - it's that Broadway audiences are getting a chance to see it at all in its intended form. The play has arrived at the Imperial direct from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company with no shortage of good buzz, heady expectations, or anything else. Spanning 13 characters, three acts, and nearly three and a half hours in an era where four-person, 90-minute-no-intermission outings are rapidly becoming the rule rather than the exception, it's an unabashed throwback to the mid-20th-century Golden Age when playwrights, producers, and audiences understood the value of theatre writ large and writ long..."

"...Psychologically, it's all extremely satisfying, but this Well-Made Play at times feels too eager to divest its treasures into neatly ordered piles. This makes for a slam-bang second half, when the payoffs of earlier setups are rapidly unleashed, but the play often crackles when it should explode in bursts of white-hot heat, as if keeping the home fires burning were more important than burning the house down. The final cascades of plot, which amplify the many complexities of how Barbara and Ivy stack up to Violet and her sister Mattie push things right to the breaking point, turning potentially stunning turns of plot into yet more fodder for familial strife in the ironically termed Heartland.

The play's too-polished exterior can't prevent it from succeeding as something more than populist pulp - Letts is too masterful a manipulator of exploration and revelations. So is the cast, which as led by the blistering Dunagan is one of the most roundly impressive in recent memory. Morton's slow crumble into dead-eyed oblivion as Barbara slowly inherits Violet's legacy is the most real (and Tony-worthy) work here, but down to the smallest role every actor captures the anguish of being surrounded by hopelessness. With a transportingly elaborate three-tiered house set by Todd Rosenthal, and Shapiro's unforgiving staging, this production is a model of contemporary theatre at its most-daring and risk-taking best; whatever its financial fortunes, it's an unquestionable artistic success.

But one can't help but wish the play itself put as much on the line. The dark territory it covers, the taboos it unveils, and its raw approach at reviving a frequently staid form brand it as a well-heeled Letts Original; its general safeness within those bounds and limited emotional intrusiveness set it apart from many of the canon-defining titles with which it's been frequently likened. "Dissipation is much worse than cataclysm," one character says in lamenting the infection of the entire United States with "the plains." August: Osage County might stake its own claim to greatness - rather than just noteworthy achievement - if Letts didn't so readily agree."

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/AugustOsageCounty.html

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 7:53pm

The AP is a Rave:

"Family battles don't get more bruising that the verbal fisticuffs on display in "August: Osage County," Tracy Letts' riveting dissection of one Oklahoma clan's bleak, brutal descent into disintegration.

The savagery displayed by these folks, particularly the matriarch, is venomous, with no relative spared. But don't be put off by the rancor. Their fights are often incredibly funny. That gives you some idea of the gutsy scope of Letts' astonishing creation which had its strike-delayed premiere Tuesday at Broadway's Imperial Theatre..........

.....Yet the playwright balances the harshness of the situation with a compassion for these people. It's an honest compassion that doesn't teeter into sentimentality as the play reaches its lonely conclusion, an ending that seems exactly right.

Letts' previous plays have embraced a wide range of styles. "Killer Joe" and "Bug" (both seen in New York) are more overtly violent — at least in the literal sense, while his "Man From Nebraska," which deals with a mid-life crisis of faith, is positively reflective in its examination of one man's bewilderment.

This latest effort will inevitably be compared to such classic examinations of dysfunctional families and spouses as Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" We will have to wait and see.

But one thing is clear. "August: Osage County" has introduced a major playwright to Broadway."



http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gHoSSCU81rTb_hP46M1GLkuIDIFgD8TAV3BG1

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 8:04pm

Variety is a Rave:

"In Tracy Letts' ferociously entertaining "August: Osage County," the American dysfunctional family drama comes roaring into the 21st century with eyes blazing, nostrils flaring and fangs bared, laced with corrosive humor so darkly delicious and ghastly that you're squirming in your seat even as you're doubled over laughing. Rushed to Broadway with most of its original cast intact after bowing to huge acclaim this summer at Chicago's Steppenwolf, this massive meditation on the cruel realities that often belie standard expectations of conjugal and family accord -- not to mention on the decline of American integrity itself -- confirms that, for once, the hype is justified.

Simply attempting a three-act, three-hour-plus ensemble piece with a dozen fully developed characters in this era of economical, small-cast productions and 90-minute one-acts suggests uncommon ambition. Doing so while invoking comparison with the work of America's greatest dramatists -- Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" are obvious inspirations, but there are echoes also of Sam Shepard, Tennessee Williams and a dyspeptic Horton Foote -- might seem to be pushing hubris too far.

But despite being known for the gory thrills and paranoiac chills of punchy little plays like "Killer Joe" and "Bug," Letts has pulled off this bold undertaking with structural panache, propulsive dramatic momentum and acid-drenched wit that never lets up."

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117935575.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 8:10pm

The Chicago Tribune is another Rave:

"Maybe the prolonged and confounding stagehand's strike had Deanna Dunagan and Amy Morton all corked up and ready to burst. Maybe they're mindful that Broadway's cavernous Imperial Theatre housed "Les Miserables" for 13 years and is best suited to the transmission of epic emotion. But most likely, they're just playing the right characters at the right moment in the best new play to emerge from Chicago in at least a generation.

For whatever the traumas of the genesis and the exodus of this remarkable Steppenwolf Theatre production of Tracy Letts' "August: Osage County," to experience this agonized mother-and-daughter duo in a Broadway theater is to sit in the face of a howling prairie gale of self-ameliorating dysfunction.

They rage. They scream. They self-destruct. Just as they did in Chicago last summer, when Letts' play had its world premiere at the Steppenwolf under Anna D. Shapiro's blistering direction. And they do it all with such an organic, hyperkinetic rush of theatrical intensity, you truly could smell the unease Sunday night in those urbane members of the New York audience who thought they'd escaped their crazy families in the flat-and-terrifying hinterlands of these United States that New Yorkers try so damn hard to ignore, if only by vacationing in Europe.

Well, guess what. They're ba-a-ck. You're just paying a hundred bucks now to sit in the orchestra and see them destroy each other. And it's better to stay a few rows away from the kind of poison that can destroy your whole life. "Oh, my God," one kept hearing from heads blown back in seats......

......Letts is hardly the first dramatist to observe that we all turn into our parents. But even if the conflicts seem traditional, their scale, expression and intensity are not. And Letts has also penned an outrageously funny and shrewdly arch play for a generation accustomed to self-aware gothic shockers at the multiplex. This thing lasts three hours 15 minutes and holds this massive Broadway joint for every moment. It is a very good — nay, a great — modern American play, a fearless fusion of populist theatrics with caustic truths.

Some might argue it's more potboiler than masterpiece. But anyone who dismisses the piece as mere pulpy entertainment is missing its determination to explore the slow death of the atrophied exurban American family. "Dissipation," one of the characters observes, "is much worse than cataclysm."

Aside from the plays of Edward Albee, it's hard to think of a comparably intense dramatic statement that kids should get and stay away from their parents — genetic connections being no real connection at all. More interesting yet, Letts extends this putrid family petrie dish into America itself. "You know, this country was always pretty much a whorehouse," Barbara laments in this new version. "But at least it used to have some promise."




http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/the_theater_loop/2007/12/august-only-mor.html

Updated On: 12/4/07 at 08:10 PM

[jaystarr]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 8:21pm

Margo- Have you seen the play? and what you think about it? Its getting a lot of RAVE Reviews, huh?

J*

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 8:28pm

I don't see it for another week and a half -- I had tickets for last month that were cancelled because of the strike -- and can't wait.

[LaCageAuxFollesFan2]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 8:32pm

Go! Go! Go! I can't sing the praises enough. There is has not been a better show since DOUBT and this play is well...just exceptional. Can't say enough good things about it! SO HAPPY these reviews are Raves thus far!

[jaystarr]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 8:36pm

For sure. This will be nominated for BEST NEW PLAY. I wonder if this will win over ROCK N' ROLL? who knows? they may give the Best Play to August: Osage County bec. Tom Stoppard already got a TONY last year.

J*

[LaCageAuxFollesFan2]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 8:42pm

Well...I still have yet to see November, but this would certainly get my vote for best play thus far this season.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 8:42pm

I'd say that AUGUST: OSAGE will be the odds on favorite to win Best Play this year. Stoppard is certainly great and an icon, but for chrissakes, he's already won the Best Play Tony 4 times in the past 30-odd years (and been nominated several other times). I think the voters will be happy to be able to embrace a new (-ish), young (-ish) American talent like Letts for a change.

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 8:55pm

I saw it in October. Considering it runs almost 4 hours, it held my interest and my reaction was generally positive. I think it's somewhat overstating the case to put it in the same league as Long Day's Journey, but I wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing it. At times it reminded me of glorified soap opera, but not to the degree that it alienated me. IF the show can continue through the winter months (which will, I think, be a challenge considering the size of the Imperial), I think it has a good chance of a Tony nomination. Rock 'N Roll has the disadvantage of being long since gone by Tony time (I know, I know, Nicholas won long after it closed, but, as I recall, it wasn't up against enormous competition). Plus, R&R doesn't have as many adherents as Ben Brantley would like to think. Just my opinion. One other point. I didn't see people stampeding the aisles to leave at the end the way they did on the afternoon I saw R&R.

Updated On: 12/4/07 at 08:55 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 9:03pm

Theatremania is Positive:

"Clocking in at three hours and twenty minutes, Tracy Letts' superb new play, August: Osage County, is not exactly a light evening in the theater. It is, however, richly rewarding. Steppenwolf Theatre Company has assembled an excellent ensemble cast -- nearly all of whom originated their roles in the work's acclaimed Chicago run -- under the sharp and incisive direction of Anna D. Shapiro............

...... Letts' dialogue is top-notch, showcasing a good sense of rhythm, a penchant for dark humor, and some great one-liners. More importantly, he makes all of his characters and their interactions with one another believable. They're not always likable, but nearly all of them come across as sympathetic at one point or another.

While the entire cast does terrific work, special praise should be reserved for Dunagan's acerbic Violet. A dinner table scene in which she cruelly lashes out at her children is both terrifying and hilarious. Even at her most lucid, Violet possesses a dangerous unpredictability, and the devastating revelation she unfolds at the end of the play elicits gasps from the audience. Morton is just as strong of a presence, and the battle of wills in which Barbara engages with Violet is the backbone of the play. The actress effectively conveys Barbara's hard-edged determination, while also revealing the character's doubts, fears, and misjudgments.

The Westons' three-story home is nicely rendered in Todd Rosenthal's scenic design, which displays the outer frame of the house while exposing its finely detailed interior. Ana Kuzmanic's costumes help to establish the personalities of their wearers, from Uncle Charlie's pink socks to the various suits and dresses each character sports for Beverly's funeral.

There have already been several comparisons made between August: Osage County and Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. Certainly, both works are dysfunctional family dramas with a drug addict mother and an alcoholic father, and have lengthy running times. However, Letts' playwriting voice is distinctly different from O'Neill's and should be judged -- and appreciated -- on its own numerous merits."

http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/12206

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 9:30pm

I hope one of the Australian State Based Theatre Companies pick this up next year. I have not been this exicted about seeing a play since "Angels in America".

[adamgreer]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 10:16pm

These reviews are making me really excited for this Saturday afternoon!! I can't wait!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 10:21pm

The Chicago Sun-Times is Positive:

"From the start, Letts’ play, which debuted in Chicago last summer, was a golden showcase for Steppenwolf’s long-lauded spirit of ensemble acting. The story Letts wove — of three generations of a twisted Oklahoma family brought together by the death of its patriarch — felt custom-made to display this strength. So did the sense that the writer had the particular vocal and emotional timbres of his fellow Steppenwolves in mind.

All of this remains in the Broadway remount. The actors still act the stuffings out of the play. And Anna Shapiro’s direction, at once silky and spikey, brings the three-act, 3œ-hour saga into even sharper relief........

.......One thing is certain: Letts (whose play arrives in New York alongside works by Tom Stoppard, Aaron Sorkin and Conor McPherson) is a real contender. His portrait of the Weston family — beset by alcoholism, substance abuse, incest, suicide, cancer and divorce, with sporadic triumphs easily crushed by a sense of persistent failure and regret, and with twisted pioneer roots co-mingling with all the ills of contemporary life — provides a certain delicious satisfaction in its sheer density of dysfunction.

As Violet, the deeply damaged and damaging Weston matriarch, bone-thin Deanna Dunagan is all anger, serrated wit and cigarette smoke, both wildly erratic and steely. Her three daughters are each damaged and lonely in their own way, with Amy Morton burning up the stage as the menopausal Barbara; Sally Murphy nearly drained of self and Mariann Mayberry willful in her denial. As Mattie Fae, Violet’s brash sister, Rondi Reed generates big laughs as she commands her husband, Charlie (Francis Guinan), to feel her sweaty back. As for the sublime Guinan, he recites a long, wonderfully awkward prayer (the play’s most perfect piece of writing) at a post-funeral dinner and almost singlehandedly achieves redemption for them all.

Almost, but not quite. After all, “August” is Letts’ vision of the American family writ large — geographically scattered yet incestuously close, and destined to move through the world all alone."




http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/weiss/680992,cst-ftr-august04.article

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 10:42pm

Isherwood from the Times is a Rave:

"All happy families are alike, Tolstoy told us, and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. But I’d bet the farm that no family has ever been as unhappy in as many ways — and to such sensationally entertaining effect — as the Westons of “August: Osage County,” the new play by Tracy Letts that blazed open last night at the Imperial Theater.

A fraught, densely plotted saga of an Oklahoma clan in a state of near-apocalyptic meltdown, “August” is probably the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years. Oh, forget probably: It is, flat-out, no asterisks and without qualifications, the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years. Fiercely funny and bitingly sad, this turbo-charged tragicomedy — which spans three acts and more than three blissful hours — doesn’t just jump-start the fall theater season, recently stalled when the stagehands went on strike. “August” throws it instantaneously into high gear.

Mr. Letts, hitherto best known as the author of the crafty, blood-soaked genre pieces “Killer Joe” and “Bug,” somehow finds fresh sources of insight, humor and anguish in seemingly worn-to-the-stump material: the dysfunctional dynamics of the American family. In “August: Osage County” can be heard echoes of other classic dramas about the strangling grip of blood ties — from Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” to Sam Shepard’s “Buried Child” — but Mr. Letts infuses his dark drama with potent energies derived from two more populist forms of American entertainment. The play has the zip and zingy humor of classic television situation comedy and the absorbing narrative propulsion of a juicy soap opera, too.

In other words, this isn’t theater-that’s-good-for-you theater. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, to quote an immortal line from a beloved sitcom.) It’s theater that continually keeps you hooked with shocks, surprises and delights, although it has a moving, heart-sore core. Watching it is like sitting at home on a rainy night, greedily devouring two, three, four episodes of your favorite series in a row on DVR or DVD. You will leave the Imperial Theater emotionally wrung out and exhausted from laughing, but you may still find yourself hungry for more."



http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/theater/reviews/05august.html?ref=theater

Updated On: 12/4/07 at 10:42 PM

[jaystarr]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 10:42pm

NYTimes is up ..

J*
Updated On: 12/4/07 at 10:42 PM

[Testing1232]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 10:46pm

SO glad the Times is a rave !!! Show is SOOOO amazing !

[jaystarr]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 10:48pm

Did Isherwood change his reviews? from positive (chicago's productions) to rave?

[InfiniteTheaterFrenzy]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 10:49pm

The Times is a rave!! Excellent!!! This play deserves to be seen by as many people as possible.

[Caroline-Q-or-TBoo]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 10:49pm

I've got my tickets! I'm so excited!

[bwaylvsong]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 10:53pm

Yay!!!!!! Unanimously loved!!!!!