AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY Reviews — Page 2

What's that sound? Oh, it's me bashing my head against the wall for not catching this while it was in Chicago.

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Clive Barnes gives the show 3 out of 4 Stars:

"THE Waltons, they're not. The Weston clan, which last night took the first of what should be many bows in Tracy Letts' "August: Osage County," is the kind of family who put the diss into dysfunctional, and took the music out of "Oklahoma!"

The play is set in Pawhuska, Okla., 60 miles northwest of Tulsa, and quite a few miles more beneath common decent behavior.

Yet the Westons are certainly a fascinating bunch and, at times, if only because of their brutal honesty, oddly likable..."

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12052007/entertainment/theater/kindred_spirited_395499.htm

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New York Sun is Very Positive:

""Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed."

Getting out of bed comes with an additional set of pitfalls at the Weston household, the setting of Tracy Letts's savagely brilliant "August: Osage County." This is in part because Violet Weston, the pill-popping, cancer-ravaged matriarch who treats her family like so many ducks in an emotional shooting gallery, has papered over the windows of her rambling Oklahoma home. ("Try not to differentiate between night and day," Violet's husband counsels the new housekeeper right before heading off on a bender.) But whether the Westons's long days are journeying into nights or vice versa, the future has been all but predetermined by a ruinous past.

Mr. Letts, a fixture on the Chicago theater scene, is best known around these parts for two off-Broadway genre exercises, the gruesome trailer-trash noir "Killer Joe" and the supremely creepy sci-fi drama "Bug." As juicy as those two plays were, however, they offered no inkling of the emotional depths on display in "Osage." Packed with unforgettable characters and dozens of quotable lines, it is as harrowing a new work as Broadway has offered in years and the funniest in even longer..."

http://www.nysun.com/article/67544

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USA Today gives it Four Stars:

"In August: Osage County, at the Imperial Theatre, Tracy Letts, a playwright best known for the taut, twisted Killer Joe and Bug, unexpectedly and brilliantly channels Eugene O'Neill. Running at nearly 3½ hours with two intermissions, and focusing on a drug-addled matriarch and her damaged offspring, August might be viewed as an homage to Long Day's Journey Into Night.

But this fusion of epic tragedy and black comedy is less a reverent foray than a bold step forward for Letts, whose earthy, distinctly contemporary wit flows throughout. Originally presented at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, his account of a family whose secrets and lies come spilling forth under duress ranks with the best American drama of the past decade.

The cast, most of it transferred from Steppenwolf, couldn't be better, but lead actresses Deanna Dunagan and Amy Morton are standouts as, respectively, a tough, bitter old woman battling cancer and her children, and her weary but not easily daunted eldest daughter. Don't be surprised if these actresses find themselves duking it out again next spring, when Tony nominations are announced."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/news/2007-12-04-new-on-broadway_N.htm



Newsday is a Rave:

"The man laughs as he says, "That's not funny."

It's late in the third act of Tracy Letts' ripping, riveting new play, "August: Osage County," the new Broadway season's first must-see offering and arguably the best new American play since Albee's "The Goat." The man in question is Bill (Jeff Perry), a college professor whose increasingly estranged wife Barbara (Amy Morton), also a professor, has just joked about unmanning him, Lorena Bobbitt-style.

That Barbara is able to mock her own emotional extremes - spurred by a relentless assault of death, disease and family discord that would leave most of us quivering wrecks - is typical of Letts' sneakily towering achievement here. He's crafted a grand, multigenerational, train wreck that's practically Greek in its scale and its pitch-black emotional color, yet he's given it all the irresistible zing of domestic comedy - albeit of a particularly rueful hue.......

.......This is a family, in short, whose familiarity has been made strange and vice versa. And this is a play that will leave us, like that befuddled professor, laughing and wondering, shuddering and smiling, long after the house lights come back on."

http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/wednesday/partii/ny-etledew5486736dec05,0,6738538.story




The Newark Star-Ledger is Positive:

"The ecstatic word from Chicago, where "August: Osage County" premiered last summer, was that Tracy Letts' play was one of the best new American dramas this side of Eugene O'Neill.

After thoroughly enjoying the show that bowed Tuesday at the Imperial Theatre, let's report that this play is nowhere near O'Neill in literary quality.

But who needs highfalutin' playwriting when audiences can savor instead one big, fat, juicy whopper of a family showdown dripping with rage and oozing with scandal like "August: Osage County"?

Ferociously performed by a 13-member Steppenwolf Theatre Company ensemble in all their head-banging glory, Letts' high-carb bourgeois dish is garnished with plenty of nasty laughs.

The show clocks in at well over three hours -- with two intermissions -- but few viewers will be checking the time, so trashily entertaining is Letts' seriocomic look at a trio of middle-aged sisters coping with crisis back at their old Oklahoma home......

...... Although director Anna D. Shapiro might have helped the playwright forge a stronger third act -- Letts has trouble nailing down his conclusion -- she apparently concentrated more on developing ripe performances from her ensemble. Every actor does well emoting in Steppenwolf's signature visceral style, but top honors go to Deanna Dunagan's poisonous Violet and Amy Morton's simmering Barbara, whose several clashes together and with other characters almost always draw blood.

"August: Osage County" is by no means great literature, but it's certainly a crowd-pleasing epic sure to be a great, big hit."

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledger/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-1/1196833345296950.xml&coll=1




The Philadlephia Inquirer is A Rave:

"I don't care if August: Osage County is 31/2 hours long. I wanted more.
I'm not sure what grew on me most: the fictional Weston family - dysfunctional, for them, is a feeble adjective - or the galvanizing acting by a troupe that pares every role down to its sinews, or playwright Tracy Letts' way of making a simple interchange scary and hilarious, at once.

Letts' new play opened last night on Broadway, in a sterling production by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. His characters get their hooks into each other and rip, rip, rip - the deeper the gashes the more rewarding for the audience. August: Osage County is like watching blood sport, except that the wounds are intellectually induced.

Letts doesn't exactly hit the ground running. His initial scene seems a little long, as we meet the patriarch of this clan, a retired poet/professor who has a deal with his wife, Violet: She leaves him alone about hitting the bottle, he lets her pop her fantastic collection of pills in peace.

The minute Violet comes down the long staircase of Todd Rosenthal's stage-high, three-story set, you know you've met a classically charged planetary force - and August lifts off. It never really touches back down, even if the Weston family itself spends the next three hours crashing all over the place.....

...... Anna D. Shapiro has directed August with a passion for in-your-face storytelling. Deanna Dunagan, as the pill-addicted doyenne, looks like an elder Jane Wyman and is a dynamo in the role - equally dangerous when she's playing lucid or not. All three actors portraying the daughters - Amy Morton, Sally Murphy and Mariann Mayberry - nail their characters; Morton, as the oldest, gives a performance so visceral, you can almost hear her screaming inside.

The rest of the cast, particularly Rondi Reed as the aunt who lost her social filter, is fully up to the task. When they all come together at the end of Act 2 for a wild dinner scene - the most memorable of several pieces of the play - you'll see ensemble acting, fueled by precision writing, that comes at you with hurricane force. Dress properly."

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/howard_shapiro/20071205_Wanting_an_even_longer_August.html




The Bergen Record is A Rave:

"You've seen many plays, films and TV shows about dysfunctional families -- you may even know a few personally -- but I doubt you've come across a group like the Westons, in Tracy Letts' wild and wonderful new play "August: Osage County."

In this grand and often hilarious epic, which runs three hours and 20 minutes and is not a second too long, we encounter alcoholism, pill-popping, smoking (tobacco and pot), swearing, incest (unintentional), attempted child molestation and dreadful manners.........

.......Among the enormous pleasures of "August: Osage County," one of the most exciting new plays in years, are the largeness of Letts' vision and his uncanny ear for the way people express themselves.

Not many authors would dare to write a domestic play with 13 characters, and then be able to give each one a distinctive voice while blending them all into a wholly believable family.

Letts, who's making his Broadway debut, had the great advantage of working with a resident theater troupe, the storied Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, where the play originated.

Director Anna D. Shapiro and the company members who make up most of the cast have an obvious working affinity; it allows the actors to function as a seamless ensemble -- a family -- while giving each one moments in the spotlight........

..........The cast, almost without exception, is so good you want to celebrate the ensemble rather than individual performers. But Dunagan is magnificent, and Morton is superb as a woman coping with a college-teacher husband (Jeff Perry) who's left her for one of his students (Barbara calls her Pippi Longstocking), as well as a teenage daughter (Madeleine Martin) with a yen for good weed.

Mention should also be made of Mariann Mayberry as the fatuous, self-involved Karen and Rondi Reed as Violet's loudmouthed sister Mattie Fae.

In its audacious length and subject, "August" brings to mind Eugene O'Neill's great "Long Day's Journey Into Night."

The family in Letts' play is as messed up as the Tyrone clan in O'Neill's drama. But while O'Neill found only gloom in despair, Letts suggests that sorrow travels hand in hand with outrageous comedy."

http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNjcmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTcyMjk0MzUmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3

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Updated On: 12/5/07 at 10:38 AM

This is the best slate of reviews for any show -- musical or play, On- or Off-Broadway -- in a VERY long time.

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>This is the best slate of reviews for any show -- musical or play, On- or Off-Broadway -- in a VERY long time.<

What of Spring Awakening, The History Boys, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Doubt and The Pillowman...? All received unanimous (or nearly) across the board raves as well.

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"Spring Awakening" - Reviews:

[ JN ] 'Awakening' to Broadway's best musical By JACQUES LE SOURD

[ SUN ] 'Spring Awakening' Best Rock Musical Ever By ERIC GRODE

[ BN ] Duncan Sheik's Sexy 'Spring' Is Broadway's Future: John Simon

[ ND ] A daring, primal 'Awakening' BY LINDA WINER

"Spring Awakening" did not merely open at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre last night. The action was more like ripping open, more like breaking out, more like tearing into the pretend pop and reused plots that pass for new musicals on Broadway today.

[ NYT ] Sex and Rock? What Would the Kaiser Think? By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

A straight shot of eroticism has steamed open under the innocuous name of "Spring Awakening," and Broadway may never be the same.

[ NYP ] AWAKE & SING! By CLIVE BARNES
(****)

[ INQ ] A raw and gripping 'Awakening' By Howard Shapiro

If there is anything like justice on Broadway, Spring Awakening - the breathtaking dissection of what it means to grow up - will become both a high mark of the season and a landmark musical.

[ V ] Spring Awakening
Review by David Rooney

For anyone weary of pedestrian screen-to-stage adaptations or cut-and-paste jukebox assemblies, the arrival on Broadway of a truly original new musical like "Spring Awakening" is exhilarating.

[ DN ] It's time to catch 'Spring' fever by Joe Dziemianowicz

"Spring Awakening" is a serious show that raises provocative issues. And if Broadway audiences are lucky, it will run for many seasons to come.

[ NJ ] Timeless teen angst fuels explosive musical by MICHAEL SOMMERS

Sorrowful as it may be, "Spring Awakening" is a remarkable musical that every generation is likely to appreciate now and in years to come.

[ TM ] Spring Awakening
Reviewed by: Brian Scott Lipton

Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater's innovative, frequently brilliant musical version of Frank Wedekind's shocking 19th-century play shines brightly on Broadway.

[ USA ] Sexual 'Awakening' puts teenagers' passions to pop music By Elysa Gardner
(* * * 1/2 out of four)

[ YN ] 'Spring Awakening' potent, gutsy By MICHAEL KUCHWARA, AP Drama Critic

[ TB ] Spring Awakening
Review by Matthew Murray

Against all odds, authors Steven Sater (book and lyrics) and Duncan Sheik (music) have adapted one of the most universal plays of the last 125 years into one of the most alienating musicals in seasons.



Check BroadwayStars, December 10, 2006

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Updated On: 12/5/07 at 11:18 AM

Best show I have seen in a long time ! Raves are SO well-deserved !!

"What's that sound? Oh, it's me bashing my head against the wall for not catching this while it was in Chicago."

Heh, me too -- I tried, but it didn't work out (damn you, rain). Glad to see it's getting such fantastic reviews, though!

CurtainUp.com is a rave as well. I'm so excited to see this December 16th!

"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).

So there we have the people at the top of the Weston family tree: a book loving erstwhile poet and teacher whose world is becoming like John Berryman's poem, "a place where I do not care to be anymore.". And so, he drinks, his wife takes pills, and their relationship is clearly on the skids. Unsurprisingly, their three daughters are the apples whose fall from this tree is too close to escape the rot at its root. Seeing that rot exposed is unfailingly absorbing and, remarkably and frequently, extremely funny.

Once the gentlemanly alcoholic Beverly has hired Johanna, sealed the bargain by giving her a book of poetry and goes missing, the rest of the clan arrives to stand by the ailing and at her wits end Violet. First on scene is the unmarried middle daughter who lives nearby, 44-year-old Ivy (Sally Murphy). Though she apparently has a responsible job at the nearby college, she still suffers the slings and arrows of her mother's supposedly well-meaning, but mean spirited digs at her failure to attract a man. Violet gives with one hand and takes with the other. ("You're the prettiest of my three girls but you always look like such a mope. . .your shoulders are slumped and your hair's all straight and you don't wear makeup. You look like a lesbian"). Her belief in makeup is hilariously unshakable ("The only woman who was pretty enough to go without makeup was Elizabeth Taylor and she wore a ton.") Actually, Ivy does have a man in her life —but that another dark secret to be unfolded.

Ivy's sisters, having fled this toxic nest, will arrive later; first Barbara Fordham (the superb Amy Morton), the oldest, from Colorado and last, Karen (Mariann Mayberry) the youngest, from Florida. Barbara's familial troubles are quickly unpacked—Bill (Jeff Perry), her husband of twenty-three years, is having an affair with one of his students and teen-aged daughter Jean (an amusingly bratty Madeleine Martin) is a pothead whose couch potato habits are hardly what one expects from the daughter of two college professors. This situation, like Barbara's menaupausal hot flashes, is hardly helped by the crisis in the old homestead or Barbara's feelings for her mother ("I'm wishing my father was here. . .and my mother was the one who disappeared"). Sister Karen, is another relationship loser, but just as Barbara's world is coming apart, Karen has finally got things together; at least so it seems, except that her fiance (Brian Kerwin) turns out to be not quite the kind of man to insure a long and happy life together.

As with any old-fashioned kitchen sink drama like this, there are peripheral characters to add to the color and complications (which includes incest). I've already mentioned Johanna, the efficient but silent Indian girl, the one totally sane and steady person in this house who must surely be wondering why her forbears were too meek to allow these weak folks from taking their land. There's also Violet's vulgar sister, Mattie Fae Aiken (Rondi Reed making her deliciously brassy and detestable). Like Violet, she has a gift for tactless putdowns, especially of her long suffering husband , Charlie (Francis Guinan), and her meek and ineffective (at least when he's around her) adult son who's still called "Little" Charles (Ian Barford). And to end the suspense about Beverly's whereabouts, there's Sheriff Deon Gilbeau (a wonderful Gary Cooper-like Troy West) who happens to have been Barbara's high school beau.

While not violent like Letts's previous plays, and not really like the O'Neill and company plays it will be likened to because of its abundance of laughter inducing scenes (one of the funniest is Charlie awkwardly saying grace at a family dinner), there's no way August: Osage County can have a happy ending. All except Violet and Johanna exit this house of miscommunication and pentup resentments — their lives remaining realistically unassured of happier times to come. The luckiest and wisest one of them all is, you guessed it, the father.

Ultimately, bad news for the Westons, Fordhams and Aikens is good news for theater goers who appreciate a well-made, well-staged, well-acted and thoroughly engaging play. My crystal ball shows a Pulitzer looming in the distance."

I was on a plane to NYC when the reviews started popping up. Grabbed a NY Times ad Post whe I got here but stopped reading them. They were giving too much away for me and I see it tomorrow night. As a lot of you know, I can't wait!! Just an aside, I am so glad to be back in NYC!!! Even with the cold and snow!

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Updated On: 12/5/07 at 06:28 PM

Is this show elegible for the Pulitzer?