By James V. Ruocco
Much like Edward Albee ("Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" "Tiny Alice," "A Delicate Balance"), the works of playwright Tracy Letts use words and outbursts as weapons - cruel, vicious, humiliating, humorous, slashing - that are played out with such numbing conviction, the effect for both actor and audience is one of excitement, insanity, boldness and complete gratification.
True to form, every character, every word of spoken dialogue, every pause, every expression and every truth create an effortless, intoxicating feel, hypnotically sustained by well-positioned uncomfortability, extremism, chaos and blatant annihilation.
Nowhere is this more evident than in "August: Osage County," the recipient of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2008 Tony Award winner for Best Play. As written by Letts, this anguished, thirsty meltdown of one very large Oklahoma family, bristles with excited Freudian intent and purpose, offset by mind games, blood sports, revelations and whiplash that leaves welts, bruises, sweats, jitters and sleepless nights for pretty much everyone involved.
At Hole in the Wall Theater, the playwright's high-wire drama is articulated with heightened awareness, intimacy, blaze and stealthily built accompaniment and entrapment.
It flies.
It pops.
It attacks.
It bites.
It digs deep.
It is also yet another reminder of the quality work that is produced at Hole in the Wall - "She Kills Monsters," "Barbeque," "A Number," "Love Labour's Lost," "Day of Absence," "Wife/Worker/Whore" - and one that benefits from punchline direction, casting and storytelling.
As conceived by Letts, "August: Osage County" frames the demolition, darkness and craziness that immediately erupts once Beverly Weston, the heavy-drinking, poetic-quoting patriarch of the family goes missing. Where he is and what actually happened to him (there are all kinds of suspicions including suicide) is finally revealed at the end of Act I, thus, paving the way for a showdown, interrogation and confessional of sorts involving a dozen or so assorted characters including Violet Weston, his foul-mouthed, pill-popping wife who is dying of cancer and Barbara Weston Fordham, their troubled, outspoken daughter whose estranged husband Bill, a college professor has left her a one of his students, a much younger woman named Cindy.
Letts, as playwright, fuels the action of his story with truths, angst, collapse, lamentation, agony, absurdity, ritual and abuse exploring family dysfunction in emotionally charged ways reminiscent of Albee, Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller.
"We're all just people, some of us accidentally connected by genetics, a random selection of cells. Nothing more."
"Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed."
"The window shades have all been removed. Nighttime is now free to encroach."
"You know, this country was always pretty much a whorehouse, but at least it used to have some promise. Now it's just a shithole."
"Surely, you must have known when you started porking Pippi Longstocking you were due for a little self-righteousness."
There's a wry, signaling agenda here that amazes, taunts and numbs, layered with edge, release and contrast, all of which builds and resonates with brashness, realism, fact and naturalism. Some of it catches you by surprise. Some of hit kicks you in the ass. Some of it creeps up on you out of nowhere. Some of it causes your jaw to drop in amazement.
Then again, that's the point.
The fact that you never quite know what Letts has up his sleeve gives "August: Osage County" its mighty allure, its gravity, its mouthpiece and its strong sense of entitlement.
Staging "August: Osage County," director Warren Dutkiewicz portrays the skewed and bruising portrait of one family's repeated rounds of madness and exaltation with crisp, carefully etched crescendos, truths and climaxes that reflect the playwright's blatantly honest, revelatory dramatization. As actor himself, Dutkiewicz comes to the production with a whiz bag of ideas, thoughts, theories and staples that bring lift and melodrama to the piece, its story board progression, its conversations, its heated expressions, its characters and its clever, accountable verbiage.
Directorially, he's always prepared whether there's two people on stage, five people, six people or seven or ten. At the same time, everything that happens (card games, the placement of a table setting, a fight in the dining room, a drug-induced moment of confusion, etc.) is watchful, balanced, precise or very much in the moment.
It's a directorial choice of decisions and compliance measured by deft blocking maneuvers, rhythms, beats and stances that mirror the swerves, irony, assaults, outrage and abrupt twists envisioned by Letts, all of which are unleashed in the manner he envisioned, intended and administered to keep "August: Osage County" harrowing, hilarious, engaged and liberating. There's also a ripping expanse of periodic surprise (no spoilers here) that Dutkiewicz handles with eleventh hour skill, showmanship and "Oh my God, I never saw that coming."
"August: Osage County" stars Ingrid M. Smith as Violet Weston, Sarah Etkin as Barbara Fordham, Lindsey Campbell as Ivy Weston, Krysten Drachenberg as Johnna Monevata, Miriam Neiman as Mattie Fae Aikem, Dennis Hull as Charlie Aiken, Khara Hoyer as Karen Weston, Julia Stone as Jean Fordham, Larry Niland as Bill Fordham, Bill Mullen as Beverly Weston, William Moro as Little Charlie Aiken, Shawn Murray as Steve Heidebrecht and Wayne Crow as Sheriff Gibeau.
In the role of Violet Weston, the dying, pill-popping, acid-tonged wife of the missing patriarch ("Nobody slips anything by me," she yells), Ingrid Smith spirals into madness, addiction, anger and pretty much anything else she is asked to do with a garlanded festoon of vivid, natural and raw emotions that culminate in a "performance of the year" status of the highest order.
She doesn't just play Violet Weston. She Is Violent Weston.
Crafting a characterization as rich, as hypnotic and as shocking as Deanna Dunagan who created the part for the original 2008 Broadway production, Smith takes hold of the playscript, eats it for dinner and spits it out with such thrilling acumen, it's impossible to take your eyes off her for a single second whenever she's on stage.
Mixing drug-induced stupefaction with high-tailed viciousness and disapproval, she is potently explosive, chilling, caustic and bare-your-soul, raw. The final image - a woman broken at odds with the rise of tomorrow - brings Act III to a close with a lingering realness that lasts long after the play has ended.
Starring in her third show at Hole in the Wall, Sarah Etkin - "She Kills Monsters," "Wife/Worker/Whore" - offers yet another five-star performance of despairing strength, guilt and crisis illuminated by real identity, purpose, rage, accent and ethic that is unleased with the knockout involvement and confidence of an actress always at the top of her game. She's amazing to watch, not only because of her extraordinary range of an actress, but because she knows how to play a scene, play a character, deliver a line and interact with the other performers with an inbred spontaneity and flourish completely in sync with the conceit of the playwright, the vision of the director and finally, her role in the ongoing drama.
Here, she steps into the role of Barbara Fordham, the oldest daughter of the Weston family whose marriage has fallen completely apart with the right mindsight, stamina, curiosity and rage Letts envisioned for the character. It's an intuitive, driven performance of reactions, beliefs, values and loss of control that Etkin communicates with befitting control, demand and embraced abandonment.
Krysten Drachenberg, as Johnna Monevata brings a natural charm, stability and presence to her role of the newly hired Native American housekeeper chosen by the missing Beverly Weston (a perfectly cast Bill Mullen) to care for his ailing wife Violet. Miriam Neiman and Dennis Hull, in the roles of Mattie Fae and Charlie Aiken, deliver dialogue and characterizations with perfectly timed resonance, heat and humor. Lindsay Campbell, as Ivy Weston, the middle daughter of the family who's secretly having an affair with her cousin Little Charlie Aiken (humorously portrayed by William Moro), plays her part with wallflower liveliness, contentment and subjected oppression.
Additional pleasure lies in the fine, nuanced performances of the supporting cast - Hoyer, Murray, Niland, Crow and Stone - all of whom fit especially well into the framework of the story, its evolution and surprise twists of fate.
A knock-out drama with a potent set up, a faultless acting ensemble and directorial choices full of buccaneering vigor, spiraling doom and blatant laceration, "August: Osage County" is brilliant, thrillingly effective theatre that plunges its audience into the mayhem and doom of an American family in the midst of collapse, rebirth and complete loss of control.
It amazes. It entices. It manipulates. It depresses. It shocks. It surprises. It resonates. It exposes. It satisfies.
The sound and the fury of Tracy Letts award-winning drama flows through the immersive environs of Hole in the Wall Theater with a rip, a roar, and an excitement helmed by director Warren Dutkeiwicz, an impressive storyteller and auteur whose grasp of the fiendishly clever material, dialogue, characters and story evolution would lead many to call this production "a work of art."
Clocking in at three hours and twenty minutes including two, ten-minute intervals, "August: Osage County" is exactly that - and so much more.
Photos of "August: Osage County" courtesy of Regina Cleaves
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