August: Osage County. As American as Apple Pie

The premise of the Pulitzer Prize and multiple Tony Award-winning play by Tracy Letts is hardly surprising. Long-distance members of a large Weston family return to the native estate on emergency, and take a quiet moment to unload on each other the many horrendous details of their profound dysfunctionality. One of the characters refers to America in one of her rants about the hopelessness of the (wider perceived) situation. However, as the action unfolds in “a large country home outside Pawhuska, Oklahoma, 60 miles northwest of Tulsa,” it could have been happening in Wu Yuegou in northern Henan province, or in Bolshoe Goloustnoe in Siberia. The surprise is in the breathtaking energy of the piece, directed by Anna D. Shapiro in The Steppenwolf Theatre Company production. This amazing energy also emanates from the star of the show – Estelle Parsons in the role of Violet, the mother of three daughters and the wife of the missing husband. She is old, venomous, and obviously sick, if not because of her failing health then because of her constant drug-induced delirium. Her name fittingly rhymes with violent, and that’s the kind of behavior she exhibits toward everyone in plain view, however, she might have some valid reasons for that. Her husband Beverly (Jon DeVries), formerly a poet and currently an alcoholic, in the first scene of the play, provides for the family by hiring a housekeeper (DeLanna Studi as Johnna Monevata), and then disappears. Then the three daughters arrive – Barbara (Shannon Cochran), Ivy (Angelica Torn) and Karen (Amy Warren). They bring their respective men – each with his own baggage of goods, or rather, bads - Bill (Jeff Still), Little Charles (Stephen Riley Key) and Steve Heidebrecht (Laurence Lau). There are also Violet’s sister Mattie Fae (Libby George), brother-in-law Charlie (Paul Vincent O’Connor) and granddaughter Jean (Emily Kinney) to aid the story with their own secrets and lies. Then we find out about the familial incest, child molestation, extramarital affairs and xenophobia in rapid succession. While none of the above is unique to any large country home in any province of the world, uniquely American is the characters’ potential ability to move, change, and readjust – if they feel their lives are getting nowhere in Pawhuska. Some of them do move physically, but not psychologically. Others, like Chekhovian Three Sisters, desperate to escape to Moscow (New York) do not move much for years. At the end, all remain anchored in their flawed gene pool, messy incommunicable relationships, and confused moral code. Following their matriarch’s example, Weston family members are not hesitant to induce pain and verbal abuse upon each other. They revile their parents and the entire generation of their parents, and then the whole country where their rural home happens to be – the world at large, not themselves. Their American upbringing serves them well in never putting blame on their own choices and actions. But that’s no news in real life as well as on stage. Another pleasant surprise of the play is the absence of happy ending. There is no loving couple leaving the ruins hand in hand for a brighter tomorrow. If there is one, its tomorrow is far from being bright. Left to her own devises, Violet knows all too well that it’s not just her poisonous tongue that deprives her of her daughters’ presence, although she might not be able to formulate it in her drug-hazy head.
True to the ugly truth of aging, the play leaves one character positively upright - domestic help provides the only help. August: Osage County is now playing through September 6 at Curran Theatre, 455 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets and information at: www.shnsf.com.