Martini Talk: August: Osage County

I said it before, in my review of The Pillowman over two and a half years ago, and I'll say it again now.  I truly hope that young actress Madeleine Martin is having a happy childhood because the characters she's been playing on Broadway are having a miserable go at it.  Making her main stem debut in the title role of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, she played a spastic, wheelchair-bound tyke who communicated with an assortment of breathy ahhhs and sobs.  In The Pillowman, she suffered unspeakably gory indignities, communicating only with high-pitched eeps.  Now, in Tracy Letts' August: Osage County, Ms. Martin plays a bitter, foul-mouthed, pot smoking, somewhat sexually active 14-year-old who becomes an object of lust for someone much older.  And she does an excellent job at it, too, delivering lines with a deadpan nastiness that gets laughs and communicates the emotional aloofness her character uses to deal with the misery of her broken home upbringing.  I predict that within fifteen years Ms. Martin will either have a Tony Award or be permanently institutionalized.

But she's only one thirteenth of an extraordinary ensemble.  With the exception of Martin and Brian Kerwin, the Broadway transfer from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company sports the play's entire original cast in an evening filled with such exhilarating writing, sensitively layered direction and beautifully realized visual design that the entire production is a remarkably high quality ensemble effort.

A bit like what might have resulted if Sam Shepherd had written You Can't Take It With You (Or if Long Day's Journey Into Night were scripted by Neil Simon), Letts has delivered a drop dead hilarious dysfunctional family comedy that doesn't lose a bit of steam during its nearly three and a half hour length while never betraying the legitimate pain and anguish the characters are going through.  Betrayal, abandonment, infidelity, pedophilia, addictions, incest, suicide, family secrets, inheritance issues… it's all there, it's all funny and yet it's also dramatically fulfilling.

Taking place in Oklahoma, at the large country home of poet Beverly Weston (Dennis Letts; yes, the playwright's father) and his wife, Violet (Deanna Dunagan), the play opens with the aging patriarch interviewing the quiet Johnna (Kimberly Guerrero) for the position of live-in housekeeper to help care for his mouth cancer stricken spouse, whose assortment of pain relieving pills generally keeps her mentally unstable.  ("My wife takes pills and I drink.  That's the bargain we've struck.")  The scene ends with Beverly warning Johnna of her new home, "Here we go round a prickly pair.";  perhaps the biggest understatement since, "The results from Florida are unclear."

When Beverly winds up inexplicably missing, the three Weston daughters and Violet's sister, with their families in tow, all gather at the home for support. With father not around and mother instable, eldest Barbara (Amy Morton), the mother of Madeleine Martin's 14-year-old Joan, tries to establish herself as the new head of the family while trying to save her marriage to Bill (Jeff Perry).  Youngest daughter Karen (Mariann Mayberry), has brought her fiancé, Steve (Brian Kerwin), while middle child Ivy (Sally Murphy), is tired of being reminded by mom that she's 44 and unmarried.  There's also tension between Violet's sister, Mattie Fae (Rondi Reed) and her husband Charlie (Francis Guinan) regarding their adult son who goes by Little Charles (Ian Barford).  Also involved is the town sheriff (Troy West) who has had a romantic past with one of the Weston offspring.

Normally, the different branches of the family tree live at a safe enough distance from one another, but the dynamic turns volatile when reunited, especially during a family dinner where Violet, who plays pity card like an ace, lashes out her dissatisfaction with the clan, causing Barbara to stage a coup in an attempt to establish some kind of normalcy.  Her roaring declaration of a new regime caps an explosively funny scene that ends the second act.

The three story Weston home looks a bit like half of a doll house as designed by Todd Rosenthal.  Director Anna D. Shapiro uses the space to establish continual action in the home, placing characters in view in other rooms while focused scenes take place elsewhere.  Ann G. Wrightson's lights guide attention just enough to let us experience the full life of the home without distracting from the text.  It's especially effective in regards to hired help Johnna, who is of Cheyenne heritage and is often seen serenely going about her business in the background.  Ana Kuzmanic's costumes do some fine character-establishing work.

"Thank God we can't tell the future.  We'd never get out of bed," says Barbara, not yet realizing the fate she must resign to once the play has ended.  If the future proves there's an audience willing to support well-written new plays like August: Osage County, a lengthy, one-set piece whose best-known star is the highly-esteemed theatre company that commissioned the work and presented its world premiere, Broadway may once again prove itself worth losing sleep over.

As the positively sterling-voiced Christine Ebersole sang "Not While I'm Around" last night at Birdland, it struck me that Ken Jennings' signature tune might be an interesting choice for a newlywed couple's first dance.  (Anybody know of any Goth weddings coming up?)  In any case, Ebersole is just as delightful as always, teaming up with the velvety-fingered Billy Stritch (I'm talking about his piano playing, thank you very much.) for an hour of, as they put it, popular Christmas songs written by Jews.  And though "Another Winter In A Summer Town" isn't exactly a traditional holiday carol, Stritch's sumptuous piano solo rendition brings out some of its gorgeous complexities.  They're there through Saturday and well worth the visit.

By the way, if The Color Purple is "The Musical About Love" then what the hell is Carousel about?

Michael Dale's Martini Talk appears every Monday and Thursday in BroadwayWorld.com.

Photos of August: Osage County by Joan Marcus:  Top: Brian Kerwin, Mariann Mayberry, and Madeleine Martin; Bottom:  the company.