August: Osage County
Tracy Letts
 |
| The Cast of "August: Osage County" |
Without a doubt, the star of Marin Theatre Company’s daring,
innovative production of the wildly popular, dark family comedy by Tracy Letts,
August: Osage County, is J. B.
Wilson’s set. The multi-storied,
multi-room weathered-wood and metal-framed skeleton with no solid walls enables
lines from the script to take on greatly enhanced meanings – lines like “You
know this house is falling apart.” When
the aging patriarch of the Weston family looks around in sweeping motion to
point out “all the garbage we’ve acquired, our life’s work,” all we see is a
house with nothing in it but its hollowed-out framing, a few wooden beds with
no mattresses, and one massive table.
And it is that table that dominates everything, rising like a middle
banister to two rickety staircases going up in steep incline, slanted so
precariously that it appears it could flip any moment right on top of the near-by
audience. For a play that exposes in
sordid details a dysfunctional family in its last stages of any semblance of
being a family, the table where they gather says it all in terms of how warped
their relationships really are.
The issue with this production’s star, the scenic design, is
that it so dominates and calls attention to itself that time and again, it
becomes a distraction, especially when coupled with the decisions made by
Director Jasson Minadakis. Because of
the permeability of the many rooms and levels of this frame-only house, we
often see the house’s multiple inhabitants and their slightest movements and
mimes while also trying to focus on the main interaction of the moment. Other times during certain altercations,
chases, and conflicts, I found myself so fascinated how an actor is going to
manipulate those steps without tripping and even at times so concerned about
actors’ safety that I forgot to listen to the lines being delivered.
With an Oklahoma drawl slow and dignified, the aging
patriarch of the Weston family, Beverly (Will Marchetti), opens the play by
quoting his favorite poet, T.S. Elliot, “Life is very long.” As he interviews a local girl of Cherokee
heritage, Johnna, to be a live-in housekeeper for the family (something his
wife has no idea he is doing), he wryly admits, “My wife takes pills, and I
drink – That’s the bargain we’ve struck.”
Later, he tells her in what turns out to be a foreboding of what is to
come, “The place is not in such bad shape – not yet” (another line that causes
a chuckle, given J.B. Wilson’s set). Bad
enough, however, that after this prologue, the play opens with Beverly’s having
mysteriously disappeared, with all the immediate and extended family heading
home to worry and console, soon to mourn, but mostly it turns out, to bicker
and battle with full vigor and venom.
Violet Weston is the matriarch of this clan who pops pills
almost as often as most people breathe. The
many pills she openly takes are at least partly consumed to relieve the burning
in her mouth from recently diagnosed mouth cancer (a cruel joke of nature for a
woman who emits from that same mouth every four-letter word and insult
imaginable to anyone and everyone around her).
As Violet, Sherman Fracher jerks her head spasmodically and jawbones her
oft-shouted words as she lashes out time and again in monstrous tirades at any
and all her family members, often ending the bombing attacks by slumping into a
defeated ball of tears and moans seeking those same members’ love and
compassion for all her own woes. When in
her doped state, she barely remains vertical as she stumbles down the steps
from her bedroom to a waiting, on-edge family below, all the time slurring
words to the point of turning them into some unintelligible tongue that they or
we can in no way understand. When only
in a mild state of numbness, her venom can strike at any moment, as in one
family gathering around the dinner table when her victims await their
individual, inevitable, verbal lashings as she proclaims, “I’m just
truth-telling ... It’s time we had some truth around here.” Ms. Fracher certainly gives a tour de force
performance although I believe at times her jerky movements of hands, head, and
body become so robotic and artificial-looking as to distract from the powerful
lines of Letts’ script.
Three daughters/sisters gather in the family homestead to
console their mother after their father has disappeared. Each brings her own personal old and new
issues, resentments, and secrets – all of which spill forth both in trickles
and floods as the play’s three acts unfold.
Barbara, the first-born, has long escaped the Plains, has avoided the
family as much as she can, and has come home with a professor-husband she is
divorcing since he is shacking up with one of his college students. Arwen Anderson reaches deep and discovers
many subtle and not-so-subtle ways vividly to express the angst, anger, and,
yes, disgust she so often experiences with everyone from her mother to her
sisters to her husband and fourteen-year-old daughter. She rises to larger-than-life proportions
when she decides it is time to take over and do a “pill raid” in the house; and
yet she collapses into a defeat of will and spirit when, in the end, she is
abandoned by those closest to her.
David Ari is Barbara’s cheating husband, Bill, who is
overall a nice guy with a compassionate (if also wandering) heart but with also
a temper that knows how to push his wife’s buttons as she pushes his. Danielle Bowen is her weed-smoking daughter,
Jean, who brings an adult edge and look to her teenage body and
personality. Jean also openly flirts
with trouble as part of her own rebellion and confusion of the adult battles
going on around her.
Sister Number Two is another Oklahoma escapee, Karen, who
has arrived from Florida with a fiancé no one knows about or has met (a very
slick and sleazy Peter Ruocco as Steve who is quite willing to break away from
grace at the family table to answer his cell phone and also just happens to
like weed and teenage girls). Arriving
with cheerleader fake moves and smiles, Joanne Lubeck’s Karen tries her hardest
to be pleasing, perky, and pleasant as she works hard to convince everyone that
she has found the perfect mate (no matter he has been married already three
times). Even after some very despicable
behavior by this Steve leads to a quick exit by both, she shrugs it off saying,
“He’s not perfect ... Like all the rest of us down here in the muck.”
Danielle Levin is the forty-four-year-old middle sister,
Ivy, who has up to now remained in the same town as her parents but has mostly
been ignored and ridiculed by her mother for not wearing make-up, not donning a
dress, and not finding a husband. Her
portrayal of Ivy is the strongest among the three sisters, measured and
under-played in a house full of huge displays of emotional outbursts. Slow to join in the family feuding, she is
carrying a big secret that is soon to cause its own bevy of fireworks as it
spawns more long-hidden secrets coming to life.
The family is rounded out in grand fashion by Violet’s
sister, Mattie Fae, and by her husband, Charlie, and son, Little Charles; and
the actors playing these parts give some of the best performances of Marin’s
production. Mattie Fae is a dyed red
head who tends to talk incessantly in her Okie accent (usually with a glass of
bourbon in hand), rarely taking time for a breath or to notice if anyone is
actually listening. When Anne Darragh is
not being syrupy sweet with her flashing smile, her Mattie Fae interrupts,
contradicts, and tenaciously insists that all others pay attention to her
opinions, especially the viper attacks she makes about her grown son, Little
Charles.
Patrick Kelley Jones is the son still bearing “little” in
his name, even though he is thirty-seven.
He is quiet and mostly off to himself amidst all the hubbub around him
but also shows a kindness and generosity that contrasts big time to his mother
and other relatives. Matching him in
overall heart and goodness is his father, Charlie (Robert Sicular), whose
patience is tried by a wife who adores him but will not, for a reason soon to
be revealed, show an ounce of kindness to their one and only son.
Watching all the family tantrums and crises-by-the-hour is
the Native American housekeeper, Johanna, perched often in plain sight of the
audience in her attic cubbyhole, far above all the downstairs melee. Kathleen Pizzo plays the one person who
others find will listen without outward judgment, who mostly watches eruptions
pretending not to notice, but who is also willing to step in and take over when
evil shows his very ugly head. She who
hears the elderly Beverly open the play with T.S. Elliot, closes the three-hour
tale softly singing to a sobbing Violet another of the poet’s quotes, “This is
the way the world ends.”
There is so much to be gained from every line of Tracy
Letts’ script, including often much humor.
When Barbara says, “Thank God we don’t know the future ... we’d never
get up,” how can we not shake out heads laughing seeing all that she and her
family are dishing out at each other’s expense?
Her sister Ivy tells her at one point, after Barbara has been lamenting
her life’s storyline, “I can’t believe you and your world view is that
dark.” Barbara blandly responds without
a blink, “You live in Florida.”
Sometimes, however, the lines are lost as the director has
chosen to have extended periods where family members talk over each other or in
separate, simultaneous conversations (which is true to life but not helpful to
the listening audience member). Other
times, the music chosen as part of Theodore J.H. Hulsker’s sound design is so
intrusive, even during a scene change, that the last lines of the prior scene
too quickly vanish as the mood/effects are lost. Somewhat like the set itself, intentions are
great in these production decisions; but the results sometimes are too
distracting.
For someone who has never seen Tracy Letts’ play that racked
up five Tonys in 2008, the production of August:
Osage County playing now at Marin Theatre Company is a definite go-see, go
be amazed, and go be enthralled. For
those who have seen other productions, nationally or locally produced, this
version may or may not measure up totally, but it will certainly be a visual
image that will never be forgotten.
Rating: 4 E
August: Osage County continues
through October 9, 2016 at Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley CA. Tickets are available online at http://www.marintheatre.org or by calling the box office
Tuesday – Sunday, 12 -5 p.m.
Photos
by Kevin Berne
No comments:
Post a Comment