Parsons delivers a powerful performance

"Theatre in Los Angeles" is not an oxymoron. There is so much theatre here that I embraced it to the point of writing plays (I've had four productions) and reviewing theatre for Daily Variety in the nineties. The people who create theatre in Los Angeles are passionate--even if it's difficult to make a living at it.

While my own creative interests have moved into writing fiction, plays remain a soft spot, and so when I teach Introduction to Literature at Santa Monica College, I'm not satisfied that the students should merely read plays. They have to see them. I find a play that we can read first and then attend.

Each semester, there are students in the class who have never seen a play, and I witness something akin to lightning zagging into Dr. Frankenstein's castle. Eyes open. A few years ago at intermission in Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, a student rushed over to me and eagerly tried to explain why the play was amazing. He said, "It's like taking a movie and giving it to real people who are in front of me like musicians at a rock concert."

This semester we focused on the Pultizer Prize-winning play August: Osage County by Tracy Letts. I loved the play, both on the page as well as on the stage. I worried that its focus on a dysfuntional family in Oklahoma was too unrelenting, but the humor pulls the reader/viewer in, and the students loved it.

I was going to review it here, but one of my students, Henry Sylva, wrote such an informative review that I'm giving this space over to him. What follows is his review of the play, which performs at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles through October 18th. This touring production next goes to Portland, Oregon (October 20-25), Seattle, Washington (Oct. 27 - Nov. 1), and Toronto, Canada (Nov. 5-15), before heading to Connecticut and Washington, DC.

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY -- A Review by Henry Sylva

As humorous as it is dark and as common as it is refreshing, Tracy Lett's August Osage County is a story that will undoubtedly strike a familiar chord among audiences.  The dysfunction of the American household serves as an ideal catalyst in a play that teaches the misconceptions of love and family.

                The collective performance of the Steppenwolf theater group, anchored by stars Estelle Parsons and Shannon Cochran, has the potential to draw up emotions of a broken heart and a splitting side as this Oklahoma family slowly disseminates into anarchy.

                Parsons morbidly plays Violet Weston, a mother left wading in the wake of chaos left behind as her husband mysteriously slips into the haze of the Oklahoma plains.  Surrounded by her arriving family, led by her oldest daughter Barbara (Shannon Cochran) and kept tidy by a lurking but always relevant house keeper Johnna (DeLanna Studi), the family's uniting depression and frustration slowly picks away at the scant relations that enabled their gathering.

                In the heat of the night, as the father-figure Beverly Weston's fate becomes realized, the shrouds that once hid family secrets cannot help but unravel. With characters overridden with emotion, the play temporarily becomes a comedic madhouse of taboo.  Meanwhile, the self-prescribed and sedated Violet characteristically takes a quiet lapse into the shadows only to reemerge at an explosive scene at the dinner table where the domineering Barbara finally announces her plans to take charge in an attempt to bring some form of order to the household.

                As members decide they can no longer juggle keeping their troubles from being known, the full weight of the family's dysfunction is laid on the table and a new and comforting sense of shared failure is embraced.  In their newfound safe-haven of discourse, the girls recount their family's troubled history, and the audience can finally understand how a family of such charismatic members could be so corrupted.

                The play ends on a note so morose and depressing that audience members may be double checking their ticket stubs to see if they're still seated in what was billed as a comedy.  However, this general reaction may also have readers of the play wondering what could have been.  For some, the play may read as a much more serious and dark storyline and those who come expecting a new-aged rendition of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman will surely be disappointed as their initial impressions are broken by the raucous laughter of their peers.

                The creative and accurately constructed set is highlighted by strategic and effective lighting that goes beyond just illuminating Lett's materialized vision.  The lighting serves as a key player, slowly creeping to black following scenes of emotional exhaustion only to reemerge and wash away the lasting tension.  Also a key contributor, music jovially pokes along preserving the plays sense of levity, but also flirts with being over dramatic as it blares full volume after more powerful scenes.

                Refusing to lay dormant in the shadows of the performance of Parsons and Cochran, each member makes his or her mark, showcasing their skills.  Libby George practically lives in the skin of the nagging Mattie Fae and is countered in a single scene by her husband Paul O'Connor, who expertly delivers probably the most satisfying and long-awaited lines of the play.  While taking a backseat in terms of the audiences focus, Jeff Still, Angelica Torn, and Amy Warren also show their stripes as masters of their craft by respecting their secondary roles.  However, Emily Kinney shows her age by delivering a ho-hum performance that causes her character to lose favor with the audience.  Despite the overall success and meshing of these professionals, Parsons and Cochran truly steal the show as Barbara rests her hand on her mother one last time and quietlly admits defeat saying, "No, you're right, Mom. You're the strong one."

                While Tracy Lett's most recent hit strays from a traditional plot line, lacks a clear protagonist, and can lose its sense of direction in the middle act that only lengthens the three-hour stay, August: Osage County is a play that will surely send off its viewers satisfied and looking for a familiar hug.