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August: Osage County | 
 enlarge | Author: Tracy Letts
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $8.12
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Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 2121
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 152
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.4
ISBN: 1559363304
Dewey Decimal Number: 812.6
EAN: 9781559363303
ASIN: 1559363304
Publication Date: February 1, 2008
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Shipping: International shipping available
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Product Description
Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama "A tremendous achievement in American playwriting: a tragicomic populist portrait of a tough land and a tougher people."-Time Out 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 One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent Broadway 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. After its sold-out Chicago premiere, the play has electrified audiences in New York since its opening in November 2007. 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 Boring Joe July 31, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"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.
 It's understandable July 30, 2008
I now understand why this play won so many awards. This was one of the best plays I've read in many years. THe characters were well-constructed and written. I hope they have an Equity touring company in the future so I can see the production live.
I would have loved to have seen this show with the original cast! July 29, 2008
I normally don't go to the theater. Can you imagine spending a hundred bucks sitting cramped in a Broadway theater? I feel like I have better things to do but with August: Osage County is a masterpiece. When I decided to finally see the show in New York, I was saddened to learn that Tony Winner Deanna Dunagan (the original Violet Weston from Chicago and New York) and Tony nominee Amy Morton (the original Barbara Weston from Chicago and New York) had left the show. In fact, this show can be backbreaking just from reading this play. The story about Beverly Weston, an aspiring writer and professor, who lives with his pill-addicted wife, Violet Weston, in a house in Oklahoma without air-conditioning. Beverly opens the play up about his life and his problems. We hear Violet in the background and don't see much of her in the prologue. The prologue is followed by three acts. Beverly has disappeared in the first act which brings about a family reunion of Violet's sister, Mattie Sue, played by Tony winner Rondi Reed in both New York and Chicago productions and her husband Charlie. Beverly and Violet's three daughters, Barbara-the oldest, married and mother of Jean arrive with her husband and teenage daughter in tow and with a secret, Ivy who has stayed nearby also has a secret about her love life (don't worry she's not gay but that might be better than the truth) Ivy never married nor will she have children; and Karen who brings her fiance Steve from Florida. Unfortunately with everybody and the recently hired Indian housekeeper Johnna who moves into the house all have secrets from each other. Still this show is really about the women characters who are realistic and multi-dimensional. We have rarely seen a show about women written by a man, Tracy Letts, directed by a woman, Anna Shapiro who all won Tonys. As this show goes to London with the original Violet, Deanna Dunagan, and the original Barbara, Amy Morton (both Steppenwolf players) in November, I encourage everybody in the London area who are theater buffs. I'm sure that somebody like Dame Judi Dench could take on Violet Weston but I would have given anything to have seen Deanna in this role. I never realized how Chicago theater
great drama is still alive July 26, 2008
this is a wonderful evening of theatre
one that will stand the test of time as so many greats of the past have done (i.e. the glass menagerie, who's afraid of virginia wolffe and so many others)
you will reread this over and over just to absorb the piece for it's many abilities it conveys.
hollywood should buying up the rights to this asap and if their is a god miss jane fonda will be playing the mother. what a role!
congratulation's mr. letts for this great work of art.
Eh July 14, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
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