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
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
