Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer-winning black comedy has come to Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre – slouching in through the door, bottle in hand and a cigarette dangling from its fingers, simmering with rage and love and resentment and sorrow and disappointment – and all the other emotions, and emotional scars – that belonging to a big, messed-up family can leave you burdened with.
Debuting in Chicago in 2007, August: Osage County went on to conquer Broadway and the West End before Hollywood took a swing at it in 2013. The story is set in Oklahoma, the playwright’s home state, but the tradition it’s drawing on is Southern Gothic – or maybe it’s Midwestern Tragic? There’s a bit of William Faulkner in the mix, maybe a bit of Truman Capote and Harper Lee. There’s a touch of Shakespeare, too – specifically King Lear, which also features three daughters caught in a dynastic struggle after their father abdicates.
Alcoholic former poet Beverly Weston (John Howard, superb in a one-scene appearance) is missing, presumed drunk, which prompts his three daughters to return home to care for their acerbic, pill-addled mother, Violet (a brilliantly bitter Pamela Rabe). There’s the dutiful Ivy (Amy Mathews); the wild child youngest, Karen (Anna Samson) who brings her fast-talking, sleazily charming fiancé, Steve (Rohan Nichol); and prickly eldest daughter Barbara (Tamsin Carroll) along with her college professor husband, Bill (Bert LaBonté), and precocious teen daughter, Jean (Esther Williams). Also back are Violet’s sister, Mattie Fae (Helen Thomson), with her painfully decent husband, Charlie (Greg Stone), and their anxiety-ridden son, Little Charles (Will O’Mahony), a textbook failure-to-launch case.
...the production moves at an impressive clip, giving its characters time to breathe, but never just spinning its wheels
So, the gang’s all here when Sheriff Deon Gilbeau (Johnny Nasser) arrives to inform them that Beverly’s body has been found. Was it suicide? Probably. But the question hanging over his exit is just one of the touchpoints for conflict as the funeral and its aftermath take place. Watching it all unfold is Johnna (Bee Cruse), the live-in housekeeper Beverly recently hired. What she makes of it all is largely left for us to parse, but when pressed, she simply says she needs the job.
Steered by Belvoir’s artistic director Eamon Flack (Counting and Cracking) this ambitious production hits more as a comedy than a tragedy (although, that could just be my rather morbid sensibilities talking). Certainly, the material at hand is as dark as you could want – infidelity, familial strife, pederasty, addiction, old secrets, fresh betrayals – and hovering in the background is the spectre of America’s violent colonial legacy, as embodied by Johnna. Yet, it’s pitched so high that it comes across as a satire of Southern Gothic.
Mind you, we are talking satire here, not parody; the production never spills into farce. That’s largely due to the strong performances across the board, which milk Lett’s multilayered dialogue for everything it's got.
For all that these characters are self-absorbed and self-deluded, for all that they deceive each other and themselves; there’s an emotional truth at the core that demands we take them seriously, even as we’re laughing at one of Violet’s savage barbs, or the razor-sharp back-and-forth between sniping sisters Ivy and Barbara. The relationship dynamics will be familiar to anyone who’s been stuck at a big family gathering after the booze has been flowing for a while – and boy, does it flow here – nominal familial affection giving way to long-standing grudges, playful jabs giving way to words meant to cut to the bone.
It all plays out on a beautifully sparse stage designed by Bob Cousins, the open plan allowing for scenes to overlap and characters to hang about in the background when they’re not the focus of the dramatic action, like the ghosts of old sins. It’s worth keeping an eye on exactly who is hovering off to the side, and what they’re doing at any given time. Cruse’s Johnna is our primary witness, and the expressiveness in her eyes as she watches this savage clan tear strips off each other frequently offers an emotional counterpoint to what’s happening in the foreground. But when other silent characters are present, we’re invited to contemplate what they observe – and what they ignore.
A subtle, haunting score and soundscape by Rachael Dease underpins the play, again harking to its literary genre roots. Over the course of Dease’s long career, half of her output has sounded like it could be the soundtrack to a Flannery O’Connor adaptation, so this is a perfect match of artist and material. Crucially, her music never overwhelms the drama – it compliments instead, eschewing the histrionic (and it’s easy to imagine a more melodramatic approach) for something more elegiac.
Clocking in at three-and-a-half hours (with, thankfully, two intermissions) August: Osage County might give the more casual theatregoer pause – but the production moves at an impressive clip, giving its characters time to breathe, but never just spinning its wheels. It’s a dense text, to be sure, but not an impenetrable one – its complexities invite multiple takes, and we could be here for hours if we cared to dig through its entire viscera. You’d be better served getting along and finding out what you, personally, get from Letts’ Midwestern family feud. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.
August: Osage County is playing at Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills, until December 15. You can find out more and book tickets over here.
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