Review: "August: Osage County"

Dramatic theater just doesn't get better than this: Tracy Letts' new play "August: Osage County" is an overwhelming, breathtaking, massively entertaining look at a seriously dysfunctional family in early 21st Century Oklahoma. When the patriarch of the Weston family vanishes, his cancer-stricken and drug-addled wife, three daughters, their various men and children, and the new Indian - sorry, Native American - housekeeper come together to sort things out. And hilarity - and I mean HILARITY - ensues.

"August" has been hailed by many critics as a great American masterpiece, a sure bet for the Pulitzer Prize, many Tony Awards, and a spot in the pantheon next to "Death of a Salesman" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night." Other critics, those lovable contrarians, have dismissed it as an empty, overhyped, noisy mess. Well, add Mr NYC to those who think it's a masterpiece.

At three and a half hours, the action flies by as scene neatly segues into scene, the characters evolve and reveal themselves, and the bit by bit the layers of the story create a rich, deep, and powerful experience. At the heart of the story is the conflict between Violet and Barbara: Deana Dunagan shines as Violet, the mother from hell who is at turns nasty and wise; Amy Morton is the oldest daughter Barbara who is trying to keep her hopeless family and failing marriage together; the rest of the cast ably supports the main stars and while you're sad for all of them, you're also sad when they go away.

This play is a jewel, the reason people love theater. "August" runs through April and, if you can go, you must.

Review: "The Minutes"

Fourteen years ago, in the first year of this blog, I reviewed August: Osage County, a brilliant epic Broadway play about a dysfunctional family in Oklahoma. It was a coup for its playwright, Tracy Letts, whose career subsequently exploded as a writer and actor -- he popped up on shows like Homeland and in other Broadway plays like Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? There was even a big movie version of August with Meryl Streep and Julian Roberts (and produced, darkly, by Harvey Weinstein). 

Now Letts is back on Broadway, as a playwright and actor, with The Minutes which I just saw this past weekend. 

Like August, The Minutes is an intense experience but it's not a family melodrama -- it's more in the vein of 12 Angry Men or God of Carnage where a bunch of people get together to resolve a simple problem and, before you know it, all hell breaks loose, derailing into insanity. The Minutes is about an otherwise routine council meeting in a mid-size town called Big Cherry (its location in the United States is left purposely unclear). The meeting goes sideways when a young, impressionable councilman asks about the disappearance of one of their colleagues who, we soon learn, dug into the history of Big Cherry and discovered, well, something unpalatable.  

I'll leave the plot at that -- you have to see it to experience its shocking revelations. But the play is a brilliant example of pure talent at work. The writing, acting, and stagecraft are perfect, making for an enthralling if quite disturbing experience.

Letts plays the frightening mayor of this town and his polar opposite is played by Noah Reid, recently seen in the show Schitt's Creek. Reid is excellent in what is arguably the toughest role in the show, and he makes for a great emotional entry point and center in a play that is about the savagery of human corruption. Also in the cast are Jessie Mueller (who mostly does musicals), the legendary Austin Pendleton, my personal favorite Blair Brown, and others. Everyone in the cast is giving a chance to shine but it's ultimately Letts and Reid's show -- they are the duality of humanity, the darkness and the light, and represent the competing forces that have shaped the country and society we live in today. 

I really want to read the text of The Minutes since its writing is quite intricate and brutal -- but, as a theatrical experience, you won't soon forget it.

PS. I was originally going to see this play when it was scheduled to open in April, 2020. Obviously events intervened so I was glad to finally see it two years and three months later.

PPS. The character played by Noah Reid was originally to be played, in April 2020, by Armie Hammer but he got into some personal trouble and was subsequently "cancelled" -- and obviously his role was recast.

PPPS. I saw this play at the Studio 54. Interestingly, I saw the revival of Cabaret  at Studio 54 in 1999 and that show also featured Blair Brown -- so, for me,  Studio 54 is now the Blair Brown Theater. 

Classic Mr NYC

A new movie based on the hit play August: Osage County, starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, was recently released. I haven't seen the movie yet, and it's getting so-so reviews, but when the play was on Broadway a few years ago, it received rave reviews and won every award imaginable. 

Yours truly saw it then and loved it. Here's my review from 2008.

The Play's the Thing ... on Broadway

Interesting article in today's New York Times by Ben Brantley about the "comeback" of dramatic theater on Broadway this year.

A Dramatic Comeback for the Play

It's quite true: this has been a great year not just for plays but for serious, sometimes disturbing drama on Broadway. This year alone I saw "Journey's End", "Talk Radio", "Frost/Nixon" and "Cyrano", "Grey Gardens", none of which were feel good shows. And I still want to see "The Farnsworth Invention", "Rock N' Roll", and "August: Osage County."

If anyone out there has seen any really good plays this year, please let the Mr NYC readers (both of them) know about it.

Let's hope 2008 is as good!

Congrats to Tracy Letts ...

... author of the great hit play "August: Osage County", which just won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. You can read my rave of it here.

If you haven't been able to check it out yet, you must! Broadway doesn't get any better than this.

Review: "Dixon & Daughters"

When I visited London in 2008 I went to the National Theatre where I saw Jeremy Irons in a great play called Never So Good (I even blogged about it here).

On my most recent trip I went back to the National Theatre and saw another, more intimate play called Dixon and Daughters -- an intense, very British working class family drama about the deep trauma of generational abuse. 

Staged in a tiny part of the National called the Dorfman Theatre, Dixon is about an elderly woman named Mary who returns home after a short stint in prison. She had pled guilty to a minor crime committed by one of her troubled daughters -- meanwhile her other daughter has a troubled daughter of her own. There's also another woman named Briana who has infiltrated and created trouble in this family's life because she knows their deep dark secret that they want to keep hidden at all costs (literally hidden by rug over a patch of blood-stained carpet).

It's a dark, brutally unsentimental play about generations of women, dealing with the harm committed against them by men and each other, trapped in a world of near-poverty they can never escape, trying to find some kind of inner peace.

A relatively short play (only 90 minutes with an intermission), the cast featured an excellent cast of British theater actors who you really believe are they people they portray. Dixon and Daughters reminded me of a shorter, British version of August: Osage County and also of the movies of the brilliant director Mike Leigh who tells wonderful stories of working-class lives (Secrets and Lies and Another Year are very similar to this play). 

While not a great play, it was certainly interesting and it's a reminder of who wonderful and powerful the theater can be, especially in London. Despite Brexit and the unending soap-opera of the royal family, a play like this is a reminder that theater is perhaps the UK's greatest cultural export.

By the way, while sitting in a small waiting area for the play to start, a great British actress Harriet Walter strode into the National and I managed to get a quick picture of her. She's been seen recently on Succession, Ted Lasso, and The Crown and has had a long career in British theater and TV.  It was an honor to see a bit of British theater along with one of its greatest thespians.