August, Osage County premiered in late June of 2007, at the Steppenwolf in Chicago. It went on to win the Pulitzer, and Tony for Best New Play. Written by Tracy Letts, it explores the dysfunction of three generations of the Weston clan, when they gather after the disappearance of patriarch Beverly Weston, a revered poet. Daughter Ivy has been living with Beverly and her mother, Violet. Just before leaving, Beverly hires a Native American woman named Johnna, to help Violet manage her various ailments (i.e. drug addiction). Ivy’s sisters: Barbara and Karen arrive with their loved ones, and Violet’s sister, Mattie Fae, comes with husband Charlie and grown son, Charlie Junior. It’s August in Oklahoma, there is no air conditioning, and the family is doubling and tripling up under one roof.
Not long after the tribe has checked in and they begin to assess the situation, Beverly’s drowned body is found. At the meal they share, immediately after the funeral, emotions begin to run high. When Jean calls her mother Barbara a liar, Violet says in the same situation, her own mother would have: “knocked my head off my shoulders.” She then goes on a tirade, describing an ugly incident where Mattie Fae had to save her, when one of their mother’s boyfriends came after her, with a claw hammer. Then the real meltdown erupts. Afraid that Barbara is going to confiscate her pills, Violet viciously roars, I’ll eat you alive. I’ll eat you alive. Barbara chokes her, they wrestle and Violet hits the deck. They all search the house for places Violet may have hidden her pills. As they regroup, each of them reveals more and more of their secrets, and gives a clearer picture of where they stand.
What keeps August, Osage County, from being a melodrama, or soap opera? We get the sense it is teetering on comedy, because the behavior turns so extreme. That being said, while there is certainly profuse humor, the content behind the strangeness, and casually reprehensible behavior, is somewhat somber. Ivy makes a speech about the accident of genetics and familial ties no more intimate than atoms. Mattie Fae is constantly berating her own son. Karen’s fiance Steve gets high with Jean and starts putting the moves on her. When quiet, subdued Johnna coldcracks him, we start to see she (the Indian) is the only one with a moral compass. An intriguing aspect of August, Osage County, is that while see adultery, drug abuse, brawling, vindictiveness, the suggestion of incest, it doesn’t feel especially preachy. We simply see these people fulfilling the current, lax, turn-of-the-century moral code, and what a train wreck they are.
Perhaps Tracy Letts is making commentary on the American Dream of the White Bourgeoisie, or the gradual destruction of Western Civilization. After subjecting Native Americans to genocide, they take over, and like the aristocracy of other failed and depraved dynasties, go to pieces. The Westons may not be well-to-do, but they have much more than Johnna, who seems to be the only one holding it together. At the center of this toxic tsunami is defacto matriarch, Violet Weston. She claims she’s all about truth-telling, but only she gets that privilege. Yes, she’s suffering intensely, and struggling to get sober, but she’s also obnoxious, nasty, self-centered and diminishing of others. If she were merely self-pitying and self-indulgent, it would be tolerable. But when she shifts into attack mode she’s worse than a rattlesnake.
August, Osage County comes at you thick and fast, and it’s not easy to process while you’re actually in the theater. It has a kind of slapdash, overwhelming feel to it, though the atmosphere (for the most part) is low-key. Oddly enough the chaos seems to balance itself, with equals parts comedy, rage, insanity and melancholy. In retrospect (I’m guessing) we all know a family like The Westons, if we don’t recognize the same traits in our own.
Director Dale Moon has assembled one of the most intrepid casts I’ve ever seen: poised, authentic, versatile and deeply dedicated. Thirteen actors orchestrated to weave this stunning, powerful, wry, achingly sad narrative of an extended-family estranged from one another, working through their own version of truth-telling, without a therapist, talking stick, or ground rules. Just the sketchy protection of self-medicating and compromised values. This is theater of the highest order, it will hit you like lightning in a downpour.
Lakeside Community Theatre presents: August, Osage County, playing April 27th-May 19th, 2018. 6303 Main Street, The Colony, Texas 75056. (214) 801-4869. www.lctthecolony.com