Theater-August: Osage County

Winner of 2008's Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the heavy favorite to take the Tony Award for Best Play on June 15, the exhilarating August: Osage County has taken Broadway by storm, firing up critics and audiences alike. Retaining most of the original cast from it's acclaimed run at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, August: Osage County centers on the highly dysfunctional Weston family of Oklahoma, headed by literary professor and alcoholic patriarch Beverly (Michael McGuire), and imbalanced, vitriolic matriarch Violet (Deanna Dunagan), who has a weakness for prescription painkillers. When Beverly goes missing, the pair's three daughters (Amy Morton, Sally Murphy, Mariann Mayberry), as well as the entire extended family, return to the homestead. The complexities of the large family's dynamics come into focus as they alternately show love and hurl profane insults and tirades at each other. Relationships are tested, shocking secrets are revealed, and the family comes near it's breaking point as they deal with disastrous events. It's all insightful and tragic, not to mention hilarious and ferociously entertaining, thanks to the razor sharp script by Tracy Letts (Bug) and the outstanding ensemble cast, not one of whom isn't pitch perfect. Special mention should go to Dunagan, who is electric as the vicious but deceptively complicated drug addict Violet; and to Morton, as eldest and strongest daughter Barbara, who is also dealing with her rebellious daughter (Molly Ranson) and cheating husband (Jeff Perry) and is more like her mother than she knows. It's a wonderful, layered performance, and the scenes between her and Dunagan are some of the most powerful of the play. With some sitcom and soap opera elements thrown in, August: Osage County is fast, funny, and thoroughly energetic and engrossing. It clocks in at a robust 3 1/2 hours, but only feels about half of that. One of the best plays I've ever seen.