August: Osage County
Written by Tracy Letts
Directed by Anna D. Shapiro
When: Saturday, May 1, 2010
Where: Forrest Theater, Philadelphia, PA
What: Play, Professional Theater, Drama
**Pretty big spoilers follow**
A Pulitzer Prize winning play that racked up Tony Awards when it was released on Broadway, August: Osage County was named the decade's best play by Entertainment Weekly. I don't know what the heck was so awards worthy about this thing. It was quite a disappointment (as is unfortunately the case when you go into something with high expectations).
This three-hour-and twenty-minute saga tells the tale of three generations of the Weston family who come together when the patriarch of the clan mysteriously disappears. We've got the pill-popping mother, the daughter who stayed in town to care for her, the other daughter who managed to get out of the small town with the "ideal" college professor husband, plus many more.
Throughout the play, shocking family secrets are revealed in the silliest of fashions -- this thing played out like a soap opera complete with the requisite audible "oh my's" from the audience herd that ate the thing up. Don't get me wrong -- there were many moments in the play's much too long 200 minutes that were laugh-out-loud funny. However, when the multiple shocks were unveiled, I couldn't help but roll my eyes at times. Daughter sleeping with her cousin...oh no she didn't! Aunt revealing that the daughter that the cousin she's sleeping with is actually her half-brother? That's cra-a-a-a-a-zy! Ugh.
For the most part, the play was well-acted, headed by the only "name" in the cast, Academy Award winner for Bonnie and Clyde Estelle Parsons. Probably most well-known for playing the acerbic mom to the equally acerbic Roseanne on her eponymous tv show, Parsons is over eighty years old and she was spry, witty, and very funny. Equally as impressive was Shannon Cochran as "the daughter who got away," Barbara. She actually reminded me of Laurie Metcalf (the sister of Roseanne on the tv show) for some reason. Cochran was given both light and heavy material and she handled it quite well. I also quite enjoyed Libby George as the funny aunt Mattie Fae and Amy Morgan as the newly engaged youngest (and dumbest) Weston daughter.
Unfortunately, the play runs too long and just doesn't work as a whole. There are moments of brilliance -- Act II is pretty excellent stuff with nearly the whole act taking place around a dinner table in which all the family members banter back and forth. But, the accolades this play got were completely undeserving if you ask me.
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