August: Osage County

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.

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.

I saw this play in previews here in NYC and told a friend: This play is going to win the Pulitzer, the Tony, everything. And I was right. The play shocked me on a personal level because so much of what he wrote about this family was MY family. Three girls. Mother who had problems. Absent father emotionally. I was fortunate to see Letts father in the lead role before he passed away a few months later. I don't know how many times I have said over the past 40 years, "If we knew the future, we wouldn't get out of bed." When those words came out of a character's mouth on stage, my mouth flew open in shock!

The Native American in the play also echoed my life. The cousin who was a brother was, in my life, a brother who was a cousin. Yes, Mr. Letts has read my mind and put it into a play. The acting was beyond mesmerizing. The actors are brilliant in each part. The play is 3 1/2 hours long but the hours go by so fast you can't believe it's over when the curtain comes down. You want more! The set is spectacular. The entire evening from beginning to end was the best time I've had on Broadway in my life. You simply cannot miss seeing this play if you're in NYC. If you do you'll regret it.

I had the opportunity to actually see this play in Chicago. What a fantastic play. Well written, well acted and will be a classic. It has received something like 7 Toni awards on Broadway this year. As one would expect after seeing such a great play. Tracy Letts writes so personally and developes his characters so you feel connected to them immediately. August is one of the finest plays written in this century!!!

What a disappointing play this was. For all the passion and screaming, other than the father who dies in the first scene, you will not care at all about any of the characters in this play.

Consider what holds you, in the great plays about angst, from O'Neill's to Albee, Clifford Odets, Hellman, Osborne and Ibsen -- even Strindberg and Beckett -- you somehow care about at least one person in the play, or learn something about how they ended up as they did, or learn something from how they attempt to cope with their situation. You get none of that in this pointless screamfest. None of the young victims of the twisted adults are at all edifying. None of the adults have even the slightest enriching qualities of life or language to lift them up as characters or people. It is all just banality. Most simpering of all are the disguised characterizations of what must be the author-as-victim. Remember how you somehow felt renewed at the end of Long Day's Journey or of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? or of Awake and Sing or Hamlet? Well, you won't have that feeling when this thing is over. You will just be glad it IS over.

It is because there are no lessons in this play for anyone.