“This fusion of epic tragedy and black comedy is a bold step for Letts, whose earthy, distinctly contemporary wit flows throughout. His account of a family whose secrets and lies come spilling forth under duress ranks with the best American drama of the past decade.” –Elysa Gardner, USA Today “In Tracy Letts’s ferociously entertaining play, the American dysfunctional family drama comes roaring into the twenty-first century with eyes blazing, nostrils flaring and fangs bared, laced with corrosive humor so darkly delicious and ghastly that you’re squirming in your seat even as you’re doubled over laughing. A massive meditation on the cruel realities that often belie standard expectations of conjugal and family accord—not to mention on the decline of American integrity itself.” –David Rooney, Variety “ August will cement Letts’s place in theatrical history. He has written a Great American Play. How many of those will we get the chance to discover in our lifetime?” –Melissa Rose Bernardo, Entertainment Weekly “Packed with unforgettable characters and dozens of quotable lines, August: Osage County is a tensely satisfying comedy, interspersed with remarkable evocations on the cruelties and (occasional) kindnesses of family life. It is as harrowing a new work as Broadway has offered in years and the funniest in even longer.” –Eric Gorde, New York Sun “This fusion of epic tragedy and black comedy is a bold step for Letts, whose earthy, distinctly contemporary wit flows throughout. His account of a family whose secrets and lies come spilling forth under duress ranks with the best American drama of the past decade.” –Elysa Gardner, USA Today “In Tracy Letts’s ferociously entertaining play, the American dysfunctional family drama comes roaring into the twenty-first century with eyes blazing, nostrils flaring and fangs bared, laced with corrosive humor so darkly delicious and ghastly that you’re squirming in your seat even as you’re doubled over laughing. A massive meditation on the cruel realities that often belie standard expectations of conjugal and family accord―not to mention on the decline of American integrity itself.” –David Rooney, Variety “ August will cement Letts’s place in theatrical history. He has written a Great American Play. How many of those will we get the chance to discover in our lifetime?” –Melissa Rose Bernardo, Entertainment Weekly “Packed with unforgettable characters and dozens of quotable lines, August: Osage County is a tensely satisfying comedy, interspersed with remarkable evocations on the cruelties and (occasional) kindnesses of family life. It is as harrowing a new work as Broadway has offered in years and the funniest in even longer.” –Eric Gorde, New York Sun Tracy Letts was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play for August: Osage County , which premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 2007 before playing Broadway, London's National Theatre, and a forty-week US tour. Other plays include Pulitzer Prize finalist Man from Nebraska ; Killer Joe , which was adapted into a critically acclaimed film; and Bug , which has played in New York, Chicago, and London and was adapted into a film. Letts is an ensemble member of Steppenwolf Theatre Company and garnered a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Features & Highlights
Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2008 Tony Award for Best New Play. Now a major motion picture!
"A tremendous achievement in American playwriting: a tragicomic populist portrait of a tough land and a tougher people." —
TimeOut New York
"Tracy Letts'
August: Osage County
is what O'Neill would be writing in 2007. Letts has recaptured the nobility of American drama's mid-century heyday while still creating something entirely original."
—New York magazine
“I don’t care if
August: Osage County
is three-and-a-half hours long. I wanted more.” –Howard Shapiro,
Philadelphia Inquirer
"This original and corrosive black comedy deserves a seat at the table with the great American family plays."
—Time
One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent history,
August: Osage County
is a portrait of the dysfunctional American family at its finest—and absolute worst. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed. The three-act, three-and-a-half-hour mammoth of a play combines epic tragedy with black comedy, dramatizing three generations of unfulfilled dreams and leaving not one of its thirteen characters unscathed.
August: Osage County
has been produced in more than twenty countries worldwide and is now a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Dermot Mulroney, Sam Shepard, Juliette Lewis, and Ewan McGregor.
Tracy Letts
is the author of
Killer Joe
,
Bug
, and
Man from Nebraska
, which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His plays have been performed throughout the country and internationally. A performer as well as a playwright, Letts is a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where
August: Osage County
premiered.
Customer Reviews
Rating Breakdown
★★★★★
30%
(266)
★★★★
25%
(222)
★★★
15%
(133)
★★
7%
(62)
★
23%
(205)
Most Helpful Reviews
★★★★★
5.0
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Summer and Smoke (and Pills)
When The Stern Librarian saw this show in New York recently she heard lot of debate at intermission (both of them!) about whether Tracy Letts has a written a classic to stand with the best of Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams, or whether the play is a Carol Burnett spoof of those masters. Anyone who thinks this play is nothing but a bawdy of exchange of insults and swears (and catfights about catfish) should read the published play. On the page it is abundantly clear that the poetry quoted in the lovely opening scene by the doomed husband finds its messy, human correlative in the scenes that follow, with language so memorable it deserves to be printed on t-shirts and sold in the lobby. This is a masterpiece from beginning to end, from August to tragic December. The Stern Librarian (I get a lot of reading done in the TKTS booth).
76 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
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"Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed."
A dilapidated, one hundred year-old farmhouse on the plains outside Tulsa has been the home of the Weston family for generations, and Beverly Weston, the family patriarch, has long found refuge in alcohol. His termagant wife Violet takes pills, whatever pills she can lay hands on, and the two have little in common and have not really communicated for years. Bev, who once published a collection of poetry, now spends time quoting T. S. Eliot, and Eliot's line that "Life is very long..." serves as a motto for Bev in his life. Bev's Prologue sets the tone for the play, and when Act One begins, Bev has disappeared. The family has gathered to support each other while they await news on his whereabouts.
A dysfunctional family which represents just about every problem a family can have, the Westons who have gathered are the three daughters of Bev and Violet, along with Violet's sister Mattie Fay, her husband, and adult son. Barbara, at forty-six the eldest of the Westons' children, has arrived with her husband and precocious fourteen-year-old daughter. Ivy Weston, age forty-four, is unmarried, constantly resisting her mother's meddlesome probing and her cruel remarks about catching a man. Karen Weston, the youngest, at forty, has brought her fifty-year-old fiancé with her. In the course of the three hours or more of this play, the family, overwhelmed by the selfish mean-spiritedness Violet, reveals and/or deals with their self-destructive behavior on all levels--from addictions, unhappy marriages, and infidelity, to sadism, suicide, pedophilia, and even incest.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2008, Tracy Letts deals with modern sensibilities but writes in the old-fashioned tradition of [[ASIN:B000GLD294 Long Day's Journey Into Night]], [[ASIN:B0000640TB Death of a Salesman (Broadway Theatre Archive)]], and even [[ASIN:0451171128 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof]]. Big, broad, and complex in its development of the family dynamics, the play maintains a surprising level of black humor, despite the level of misery within this family.
As the action reaches its climax, and the various characters must decide how they will deal with the rest of their lives, the audience sees that the decisions that are made are the only ones that can be made, given the nature of these particular people and their limitations. It would be a mistake to say that the problems are "resolved," but they are, at least, "settled" for the audience. An intense and powerful drama with enough humor to keep the action from overwhelming the audience, August: Osage County is a memorable modern day addition to the tradition of Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. n Mary Whipple
[[ASIN:0810123479 Man from Nebraska: A Play]]
[[ASIN:0822220164 Bug]]
[[ASIN:0573627363 Killer Joe, a Play]]
[[ASIN:B0007SK1UO Biography - Letts, Tracy (1965-): An article from: Contemporary Authors Online]]
13 people found this helpful
★★★★★
3.0
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Eh
The Broadway performance features scintillating acting, a gorgeous set, and plenty of witty one-liners... but a hollow soul.
Of course, the play is meant to be existential, but the trouble is that one leaves the theater wondering, "What is the point of this play?"(Then again, if our existence is ultimately meaningless and unable to have meaning carved into it, perhaps this drama has been surreptitiously profound in its utter lack of direction.)
At the end of the day, the drama is not engaging; there is no "drama" to this drama, no conflict to be wrestled with, just an endless series of sometimes interesting, sometimes funny, conflicts that add up to nothing. There are worse ways to spend an evening, or $120. But classic drama, this is not.
12 people found this helpful
★★★★★
3.0
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Nice Wit and Spark, but Nothing Really New...
With its colorful characters and snappy dialogue, "August: Osage County" makes for an unquestionably enjoyable night at the theatre as well as a fun read.
It's a nice piece -- witty and sharp, but as a much-heralded 'masterpiece' it fell short for me. It was ultimately pretty derivative, with a story and characters that are basically a mashup of "Crimes of the Heart" with your basic Tennessee Williams melodrama, and with a dash of the bitter dust of Sam Shepard for flavor.
The play itself moves along at a snappy pace but(especially when viewed onstage) is far too long, and could have been edited both in writing and performance to be much tighter. The three-act format feels indulgent and unnecessary. There are also several extraneous and completely unnecessary characters who directly contribute to the bloat, some of whom are total cliches. (The worst of these, a sleazy pedophile, is so clumsily telegraphed that he basically announces his motives within his first four lines of dialogue -- the audience actually groaned aloud when I saw it.)
For me, for something theatrical to be a masterpiece, I want to feel like I'm reading or seeing something new -- a story or characters I have not seen before. And unfortunately there just wasn't anything that original about AOC -- we've all seen the dysfunctional screwball family drama a zillion times and this just didn't bring all that much new to the table for me. When I saw "Wit," for instance, I encountered a truly unique character. I heard language I had never heard before, thoughts I had never imagined. Same with "Angels in America" and heck, even "Prelude to a Kiss."
But AOC? It's an enjoyable piece of theatre. On the up side, there are some wonderful monologues, some sharp observational humor and dialogue, and a lovely, truly haunting ending.
But, while a perfectly good effort, I was surprised that it won the Pulitzer Prize -- I just didn't see anything that brought it to that level for me. It's a good play. But I don't think it's a play for the ages and suspect it will probably not be performed all that frequently decades from now. Time will tell.
11 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
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A must-read for literature and theatre lovers alike...
By far one of the best plays I've read in a long time, maybe even since my love affair with 'Angels in America.' Bitingly funny and horribly tragic, I've yet to find one disappointed fellow reader of Letts' masterpiece.
9 people found this helpful
★★★★★
3.0
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AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY by Tracy Letts
August: Osage County is Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which debuted in 2007. It is typically billed as a dark comedy or tragicomedy. It deals with the reunion of a family in rural Oklahoma after the death of its patriarch. During this time, skeletons come out of closets, and drama ensues.
The play features 13 characters, and most of them get a substantial amount of attention from the author. Balancing all these characters is something Letts does particularly well, and this is especially highlighted when there are two and three conversations going on simultaneously.
Very few of these characters are the least bit sympathetic. Most of them spend most of their time hashing out their problems in nasty, unpleasant ways. Letts seems to be under the impression that the way to go here is to create as many irreconcilable issues as he can and then not resolve any of them. Some people may think that makes good drama; others will rightly ask, "so what?" and "what's the point?".
August: Osage County certainly has its moments, but it's never particularly innovative or impressive. I, for one, am hard-pressed to understand just what about the play was Pulitzer-worthy.
7 people found this helpful
★★★★★
2.0
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I'm missing something here
I follow the goings-on on Broadway fairly closely, attend theater regularly in Los Angeles, and have recently started buying scripts of the latest plays - especially Tony and Pulitzer Prize winners. I am not particularly educated when it comes to the structure or the art of playwrighting. But I know when I find something inspiring and uplifting. And I must be missing something here. I would imagine the performances of the recent Broadway cast of this play were outstanding, etc. But I somehow fail to see how 3 hours plus of family members with all kinds of crazy problems cussing at each other is inspiring. This play, even though very different in style and content, left me feeling much like how I felt after recently sitting through "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff" - what's the point? OK, I'm shallow, but I think there are better things to spend one's energy and focus on.
7 people found this helpful
★★★★★
3.0
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Boring Joe
"Killer Joe": now there was a play. Lights go down in the theatre. Suddenly a single light shoots across the stage. We see the rear end of a gal bending over as she searches into the refrigerator, its light illuminating her nude body. Bingo. And it goes straight up from there. Wonderful show. Audience loved it. "Osage" opens with a middle aged bugger talking inaudibly to an Indian woman about coming in as a maid. It's a ten minute scene, more or else. Lights out and in the next we learn that he's gone off and may be dead. People gather, drunks walk around on all fours. It's something like an episode of the Coneheads without the cones. I heard a few laughs in the auditorium, but by then everyone had heard that the play was great, so I guess they told their friends it was worth seeing. I didn't. This is another one of these epic plays celebrated for about 14 1/2 minutes and sure to be forgotten. In fact, I defy those who loved it to remember the names of the characters. We don't easily forget Mary Tyrone in "Long Day's Journey Into Night," ditto Big Daddy in "Cat On Hot Tin Roof." The reason is the writing. In "August" there isn't a single character worth remembering. Twenty years hence, it is inconceivable to me that an actress or actor would say that this is the play they'd most like to be in. Actresses keep reviving "The Little Foxes" because it has a great role for a woman of a certain age. This is what keeps plays alive. These epic messes that keep making it to Broadway from the mid-west via Louisville and Chicago have lots of eccentric prairie dog types with goofy names and odd habits such as smoking pot at the supper table, but in the end this sort of late-Sam Shepard play goes nowhere. There is no dramatic action. There is nothing going on but a staged short story.
6 people found this helpful
★★★★★
1.0
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Sooner: Bust not Boom
This play requires a cast of at least a dozen experienced character actors. Their bodies, faces, movements and voices must bear the visible and audible signs of the suffering their characters have imposed on each other -- long before the first curtain rises.
If the offstage death of the patriarch of this miserable brood did not take place sometime just after the end of the first scene, it would almost be fair to say that nothing happens, give or take a little child molestation, during the 210 minutes of more or less clever talk and screaming that comprise the prize winning script of this effort.
Prize winning? There's the rub! Why? Beats me.
Nothing in the text. Nothing to support the fantastic comparisons to "Death of a Salesman" and "Long Days Journey into Night." So it must have been the actors. The actors and their bodies must somehow have transported the past to the present space behind the footlights.
Try watching "August: Osage County" with amateur performers and you'll see what I mean.
5 people found this helpful
★★★★★
3.0
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The Banality of American Macabre
You'll find everything except murder in this play: suicide, adultery, mental retardation, drugs, sexual abuse, lots of spite and hatred, dysfunctional families and plain stupidity. Tracy Letts brings together so many people during this family gathering probably to endow each one of them with his or her very own very personal sin.
It's not a problem as such to have a dozen or more characters in the play. The problem is - each of them gets pretty much equal attention. There's no focus in the play, it just shows all members of the family - rather superficially. Yes, they are all recognizable, this can be seen as Letts' strength in being able to clearly show a person in so few words, but I felt rather lack of general idea in the play - other than "everything is so disgusting".
On the other hand maybe this was Letts' idea, to have no plot and focus whatsoever, following Uncle Vanya's "nothing's happening" approach. In general he succeeded, showing this very bleak picture of American decline and fall, with the only "positive" person in the whole play being a Native American housemaid (political correctness?).
Here and there Letts's trying to be funny. One of the family members this way explains why it's important to maintain family connections: "You never know when someone might need a kidney." This gives you a good idea of how much fun you're going to get from this play. Don't take me wrong though, this is not why i gave the play just three stars. The reason is - it's not (to my taste) of what they call enduring quality, however true picture of american life it might give.
