August: Osage County

First published on 25 Sep 2009. Updated on 5 Apr 2011.

The Blanchett-Upton curatorship of the STC is starting to yield spectacular fruit not just in individual productions but with rhymes and synergies between them. Hot on the heels of Andrew Upton's solid staging of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night comes another story about a dysfunctional American family traumatised by the mother's drug addiction. And if you thought that Susie Porter (That Face) and Robyn Nevin (Long Day's Journey) were going to have to fight it out one-on-one for the end-of-year "Lousiest Mum in a Play" award, you haven't seen Deanna Dunagan, whose vicious turn as matriarch Violet Weston (they lost an ‘n' somewhere from that name) has won her a host of accolades including a Tony.  

Dunagan is part of the all-American cast of August: Osage County, Tracy Letts' Pultizer Prize-winning play that comes to the Sydney Theatre in the original production by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, directed by Anna D Shapiro. It's about an extended family that reunites in Osage County, Oklahoma, following the disappearance of alcoholic dad Beverly Weston (Chelcie Ross). Of the three Weston daughters, the eldest, Barbara (Amy Morton) is the strongest-willed and the least likely to put up with Violet's pill-sharpened bile.

Barbara's marriage to Bill (Jeff Perry) is on the rocks and their 14-year-old daughter Jean (Molly Ranson) is hitting the pot hard. Middle daughter Ivy (Sally Murphy) has had her self-esteem ground into the dirt and is in a secret relationship with her first cousin Little Charles (Gary Wilmes). Youngest daughter Karen (Mariann Mayberry), meanwhile, is engaged to the oleaginous Steve (played by sultan of smarm Gary Cole of Office Space and The Brady Bunch Movie fame), who's waaaaay too interested in Karen's teenage niece. When this group converges for a family dinner, dysfunctionality is on the menu, leading to the play's rightly famous second-act climax that saw audience energy levels in the Sydney Theatre zoom off the charts on opening night.

Tracy Letts' play is in the grand tradition of O'Neill, Albee and Miller: the effects of one generation's suffering are all too devastating on the succeeding one, and the American dream is never less than nightmarish. But this is also one of the funniest nights in the theatre you'll ever see, uncouth and scabrous, brilliantly acted and taking place in a marvellous three-storey set by Todd Rosenthal. Have you ever wondered what a unanimous standing ovation looks like? Sydney theatregoers may be notorious for always leaping to their feet but for once the acclaim was instant, spontaneous and more than deserved. Nick Dent

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Preview:

Cate and Andrew have certainly programmed a healthy serve of American classics at the Sydney Theatre Company this year. Long Day's Journey into Night will soon be making way for another Pulitzer winner, August: Osage County, and later, Sam Shepard's popular True West will be directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman. All three deal with the breakdown of the American family but only August, called the greatest American play of the last decade, will be performed by (most of) its original cast.

A production from Chicago's legendary Steppenwolf Theatre Company, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and five Tonys, August is the story of a short period in the life of the Westons. "I drink, and my wife takes pills," says patriarch Beverly Weston to Johnna, the home help he is hiring to take care of his run-down house and ailing partner. Amy Morton plays Barbara, the eldest daughter and the backbone of the family. She and her relatives are yanked back to the decrepit homestead when Beverly goes missing. "She's a very, very strong woman," says Morton of her character. "She knows how to hold a family together, or at least a semblance of togetherness."

The arid landscape of the Oklahoma plains is a constant presence in the story, dry heat and desolation weighing on the characters as they disintegrate emotionally. Johnna, the only person in the house not a family member, is also Native American. Hers is "a completely different connection" to the landscape. Morton points out that the play begins and ends with a Native American, and quotes Kimberley Guerero, who plays the character: in her community, they've "always been taught... that we were here before they came and we'll probably be here after they leave."

"It's kind of the story of America," says Morton.

It's also a story very particular to the Midwest. "The Midwest is a very peculiar part of this country, and having grown up [there] I notice every time I go somewhere else, it feels like almost a different country. Midwesterners have their own set of screwed-up rules." The Westons certainly run on screwed-up rules. Everything you expect from family relationships is inverted, and the gradual revelation of their shocking secrets sinks them further and further into a quagmire of their own making.

Written by Tracy Letts (whose tale of paranoia Bug played at Griffin earlier in the year), August is frequently compared to landmark works of American drama. "And it irritates him!" Morton says. "People [say] ‘is this an homage to Albee? Is this an homage to O'Neill?'" There is, nevertheless, an unquestionable link between the three playwrights: uneasiness with the so-called American Dream.

Morton has been with Steppenwolf for 13 years. She makes occasional film and TV appearances - she played one of George Clooney's sisters in Up in the Air - and directs for other companies, but feels she does her best work with the Chicago company whose alumni have included Joan Allen, Gary Sinise and John Malkovich. "When I'm on stage with my company members, I feel like somebody has my back," she says. Vivienne Egan