August: Osage County -- A Soap Opera? — Page 3

nomdeplume, you have seen the play. So therefore I can't argue with you on how you liked or disliked it. Sorry the show was not what you may have expected it to be.

I enjoyed the play. Did I think it was brilliant right after seeing it? Not really. it was a show, as I have said, that I had to think about for a bit. It is a very over the top play but after sifting it around in my head, I found it to be a pretty brilliant piece. For me there was much more beneath the surface and each actor, for me, was actually more than one character. They each embodied so many different personalities and pulled it together brilliantly into the characters we saw onstage. The only real "flaw" I found with the show was the portrayal of the granddaughter. I just feel that Ms. Fordham played it more like Christina Ricci's Wednesday in The Addams Family movies. Just a bit too deadpan. And I saw the situation with her and the fiancee coming the moment he interacted with her. But these were minor things for me. As a whole, I would see the play again. And If I get back to NYC before it closes, I plan to.

And I agree with you about posting your opinions not based on other posters, but on the piece itself. That is what I have been trying to get across to Tkt2Ride.

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Updated On: 12/16/07 at 12:27 AM

I guess I'm just horrible at expressing myself, but the intention of my original post was to question why the need to knock people who liked the play in your review of the play as you've done in your most recent post. Despite asking us to focus on "THE PLAY" you still manage to find room to insult "a lot of theatergoers." August seems like rustic theater to me, and a lot of the negative remarks have a distinct odor of elitism to me... that was my point... which I guess is either not interesting... or I have failed to communicate it.

kmc

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Hm?

A careful read of what I wrote reveals that "a lot of theatregoers" are not able to distinguish between a soap opera and a true play. That was only directed toward my own and Tkt2Ride's preferences as we like one but not the other. You follow?

Other theatregoers may just like both and they are either not able to distinguish between the two genres or do not care if it is one or the other genre. Really you are reading too much into that if you view it as "insulting" some or certain theatregoers.

Different people are looking for different kinds of theatre. It pays to be careful in making your choices because live theatre can be very expensive and you don't want to feel like you've wasted your money when if you were diligent about finding out about the play first you could have avoided it.

Personally I put a lot of effort into researching and choosing what plays I am going to see and I find it really pays off. If you know which of the upcoming plays you want to see early on, you can often see them on heavy discounts or comps if you are prepared and the opportunity arises during previews.

I think this thread is closer to a soap opera than the show is.

So I saw the show last week and went into it blind. I knew nothing about it and sat in the last row for $26.50. Now, I don't really like soap operas, but I liked the show. A lot. I was kinda bored for the first 15 minutes, but after that I loved it! Yes, there were flaws, but when I left I thought to myself, "That was pretty f*^#$d up!" I also left feeling like I spent only $26.50 on 3 1/2 hours of quality entertainment that kept my attention for the majority of the time. For that and many other reasons, I thought it was a great play. This is my personal opinion, you can either agree or disagree, that's not really the point of this post.

So here's the point and what I would like to discuss: Whose story is it? Is it Violet's or Bev's? If it's Violet's story I think I would characterize this as a tragedy. If it's Bev's story...a melodrama.

PS.
"Pretty obvious that "August" was added to the title just to put it alphabetically at the top of any list published in media or theatre chart, as at TKTS"

A Chorus Line did the same thing and I think they did pretty well for themselves. I'm not saying that this was the intention of August: Osage County, nor am I comparing it to A Chorus Line....but when it all comes down to it, good or bad we're all artists trying to put something we made out there and maybe get paid for it.

It's a funny accusation that you are "elitist" if you use your brain and realize a show is just a cheap soap opera and you've been cheated of the money that you spent to see it.

Under that theory, everyone should be a dumb consumer and go and spend money for trash and run around and say it's great.

As I said before, it doesn't hit me as a real story for anyone in the play. It's more the seeing of a family through the prism of a mind which perverts every one and every intention into something lurid because that mind itself is warped.

Hm, like the perversion of clear sight and intelligence into "elitism"! Funny that a poster would try to insult me just because I don't like a show, but to me that shows me how weak the supporting argument for the show is.

Durang and Busch are delightful because they make fun of such run-on luridity by sending it up. Osage just drops it into the mud.

I hope the play itself does not get nominated for any awards because I think it is unworthy. And no one has yet produced an argument that convinces something in the play's structure elevates it out of being a pandering soap opera. Structure is different than an individual's emotional response to a play.

Play structure takes a long time to learn and appreciate. Putting in that time and effort makes someone educated or erudite, not elitist. However, if you want to define elite as being a member of leadership, then I will take the lead here to shine the light, as I see it, on the weak underbelly of this play.

Updated On: 12/16/07 at 11:17 AM

And another...
Washington Post's Peter Marks didn't care for

uncageg, I can dislike a show, and fight to the death for your right to see it, like it and support it at the same time.

Let me give you a comparison example of family drama to point out what I do admire in a playwright's capturing of family relationships. I find Conor McPherson to be a wonderful playwright and story teller. In The Seafarer there is a scene in which the sighted brother blows up and as the audience you have a sudden fear that he may attack the sightless brother. It is the sightless brother's response to his brother, and what he tells the others in the room that his brother will do at that point that reveals their long relationship at a family level of closeness, the deep level of understanding of how another human being ticks from longtime close association that makes McPherson a master of observation of human behavior. It rings truer than anything in Osage to me. I don't want to give it away that much.

Osage doesn't have anything that hits that depth and the closest scene that comes near it is when the daughter stages a coup and sends everyone on a pill hunt. But even that is more manufactured to me than coming from a deeper subconscious level on the part of the playwright. McPherson seems to have seeped his scene from knowledge of the human heart rather than the constant fake antagonism of television. McPherson could even be oblivious to his revelation of human behavior because it probably came from an intuitive place, where the best writing and structure come from.

Of course.

uncageg, that is because there were so many favorable reviews and the show was strongly recommended to me that I was surprised when I saw it that I was left feeling so differently about it.

And I began to feel that all I had seen was a soap opera and posted this before the other reviews came out where some reviewers had felt the same way. I thought I might be alone in the bunch, but there were others.

Sometimes, after you read or see a show, a discussion can provoke a deeper understanding and you can find a layer or a level you missed. I haven't read or heard anything yet that does that for me with this show, but I may. The work of a truly great writer is like that--think William Faulkner with all his levels of interpretation in his works. I haven't found that with Letts yet, despite all the attention the play has received.

bkonbroadway, I disagree with you on the insulting part. You have, however, raised a very good question in what do I mean by structure and you are right that I do not mean simply are the parts there, like an inciting incident, etc.

You have asked a hard question and it may take me a while to come to the answer, not just one post and perhaps not just one thread.

In a well-crafted play there is a sense of a unity of the whole that you often do not perceive until you get to the end of the play, and sometimes after that, thinking back on the play. It can be a series of events through the play that are all related to the situation and outcome of the play, for example. (You can't lock down the definition because you will always be able to find the exception to the rule that still works for another reason.).

[Seafarer spoilers]

In The Seafarer, things are happening like the setting of Christmas, the Irish in the play being Catholics, the sightless brother being visited by his sighted brother with the underlying knowledge that family helps out when another member of the family is in trouble--ostensibly here the brother who has lost his sight, the background knowledge that Jesus could make the blind see and redeems souls, the revelation of the presence of the devil in their midst known only to the sighted brother, the sightless brother and friend singing Ave Maria while the Devil cringes. You don't know if the sightless brother will somehow regain his eyesight in the play, whether the sighted brother will injure someone or lose his soul in the card game or what will happen, and imagine being set up for a convention where someone sits down to play poker for his soul with the devil and doesn't tell the others in the room that it's the devil perhaps because he's given up hope of escaping hell. Will the devil cheat at cards? You have a lot of questions.

Then the devil appears to win until it gets discovered that the sightless brother, whom the devil has said he has no chance with because he's a true believer, turns out to be the winner of the final hand. The devil looks at the sighted brother and says to the effect that someone up in Heaven loves him. And you think back over the course of the play and realize that it is the fact that the sightless brother is present and is an uncorruptable true believer, sighted or not, that the devil never had a chance. And we have seen and heard the brother drunkenly singing the Ave Maria with the Devil squirming but didn't connect the reason why he was singing was his religious faith, even when soused.

Osage doesn't have the setups for the ultimate payoff, it just seems to move from one lurid event to another without reason, just for the luridness. Doesn't do it for comedy like the plays of Durang and Busch, but instead tries to get us to buy it as serious. Please.

And here is another play which I did not like at all because it was so nasty and mean while I was watching it, Dying City by Christopher Shinn which was at Lincoln Center Theater earlier this year. Until afterward I had my "Aha!" moment and realized that the two brothers had an incestuous relationship and the brother who presented as straight really wasn't and that was what was behind his horrible treatment of his wife. Once I got it I very much admired the play and would have seen it again to take another look to find the additional nuances setting that up. Again, a well-crafted play, much as I didn't like the meanness in the subject matter or the ill treatment of the wife. It also explained why, when the brother decided to take a nap in their bed on a last night before the soldier brother shipped out, the wife was so furious and not forgiving of that and insisted the brother leave, almost as if by her instinct she understood what the nature of their relationship was. There were other clues and undertones, too.

Those are examples of what I mean by structure as in the construction of the play.

© 2007 nomdeplume by pseudonym, all rights reserved

Updated On: 12/16/07 at 08:31 PM

I regret to inform you that I could not read the majority of your last post because I have not yet see The Seafarer, but plan to probably next week. I have been to the box office twice but haven't acutally gotten tickets yet (long story).

Anyway...the way I would like to look at it, in the end (and I'm sure there are many arguments against this theory) is that this show is a tragedy, and Violet is the tragic hero. Here it goes:

*spoilers* She has an elevated stature of the matriarch of this family of mostly bold and strong women who is comfortable with her current lifestyle. He drinks, and she takes pills. All is well. Her tragic flaw is probably pride and overconfidence that lead to her ultimate demise of having all of her loved ones against her and seeing her for who she truly was. I don't know if they have lost love for her, but they have lost respect. She was so bold to tell everyone the "truths" about themselves, but in the end, has to face the truths of what she has done. She is left, in the end, in a "death" of some sort because she is alone and unloved and with the only comfort being who she has disregarded as a person this whole time: the Indian (Native American) housekeeper. Her weakness has been completely exposed. What is to be learned from this tragic hero? The proud and overconfident will fall.

So that is my take on it. I'm sure there are arguments against this theory, but so be it. I'm sure there could also be an argument that it's Bev's story (which I tried to discuss in my other post). People reading this, feel free to disagree...just don't be nasty about it. Thanks

I agree with you bk.

I also feel that part of the setup was everything going on with the sisters. Each had their own crisis to deal with. Two came home because they "had" to and the third is trying to get out. It became oviouse that the two were going to go back and deal with their own lives and the one would leave. And as for the Aunt, it was obvious to me that she was now going to distance herself after her big revelation. The sisters had their "bonding" time together, but you knew it was only going to last for that short time before their seperate lives took over again.

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Despite her downfalls she is still trying to be a mother. Even through all of the pills. And I think she knows that she has pretty much lost the respect of her kids. When she's lucid. But no matter what, she raised her kids. I wouldn't so much call her a hero. And I also think that when she finally dies, her family will be right back at the house, but I don't thinkg the atmosphere will be the same. I think there will be a sense of relief and also a real sense of sadness. Moreso then when the father "died".

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