In Tracy Letts’ “August: Osage County,” an Oklahoma family called home to consider the whereabouts of their disappeared father gets sucked into a vortex of drug abuse, violence, incest and the ugliness of a venomous, pill-popping matriarch. What looks at first glance like a riff on Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” spirals into a three-day binge of emotional chaos that mirrors the child-devouring natures of Lear and Cronus.
Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and one of the best American plays in recent memory, this blackest of black comedies has arrived on the Alliance Theatre stage with the urgency and destructiveness of a howling gale. Theater-goers looking for occasional glimmers of grace will be hard-pressed to find them in Letts’ horrifying tale of an alcoholic poet, his drug addict wife, their three lovelorn daughters, one noble servant and extended clan of hangers-on.
As directed by Susan V. Booth and starring the creme de la creme of Atlanta theater, this three-act epic isn't the seamless piece of work that was the Broadway original, but it is a salty, bristling affair that leaves the prickle and sting of real tears. Led by Brenda Bynum, as the vicious matriarch Violet Weston, the ensemble lives up to Booth’s intent to use a group of actors whose close working relationships over the years have equipped them with the intimacy, history and shorthand of a real family.
7 Stages artistic director Del Hamilton plays Violet’s husband, Beverly, an acclaimed poet numbed by endless indistinguishable days and nights of drinking. Hamilton makes for a terrific souse. As Violet’s sister, Mattie Fae, the first-rate Jill Jane Clements is vulgar yet never grotesque, while Georgia Shakespeare producing artistic director Richard Garner (as Mattie Fae’s husband, Charlie) brings a welcome dose of hilarity and pitch-perfect comedic timing.
As middle daughter Ivy, Carolyn Cook gives an understated performance, while Courtney Patterson (as youngest daughter Karen) perk ups the action with an uproarious almost-soliloquy on her misguided efforts at romance. Diany Rodriguez (as the young Native American that Bev hires as a housekeeper) is lovely and stoic of manner, her self-control a quiet condemnation of the Westons’ cruelty and vitriol. As eldest daughter Barbara’s young pot-head daughter, Jean, Bethany Anne Lind nails the ennui of a woman forced to grow up too soon — and likely to remain there. Andrew Benator (as Little Charles), Chris Kayser (Barbara’s husband Bill), Joe Knezevich (Karen’s intended Steve) and Bart Hansard (the town sheriff and former beau of Barbara) all deliver solid performances, but the near-invisibility of their characters goes to show that this is truly a story about women.
Which brings us to Bynum and Tess Malis Kincaid (Barbara). Bynum’s unrestrained theatricality and exhaustive arsenal of details illuminate the ever-changing moods of Violet. In her rare moments of clarity, we see Violet’s humanity. In raging, hissing monster mode, however, Bynum’s Violet is sometimes too big to believe. Some moments (like the “Where’s the beef?” lulu) get lost in the fracas. Kincaid is heartbreaking in her depiction of a woman who is still madly in love with her philandering husband and fearful that she is turning into her mad mother. I get a lump in my throat just thinking about her deeply affecting performance; if there’s a better actress working Atlanta today, I have yet to see her.
Designer Leslie Taylor images the Weston home as a sprawling, ’70s-style split-level; partitions are left open so we can see right into areas that should be private. Mariann Verheyen’s costumes are appropriately pedestrian, never really stylish. Violet, who suffers from mouth cancer, keeps the house so warm that everybody complains about the heat. Letts has created a remarkable vision of hell. Here even the wicked find pity.
Theater review
“August: Osage County”
Grade: A-
8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through May 8. $20-$50. Alliance Theatre, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000, alliancetheatre.org
Bottom line: A knockout.
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