"August: Osage County' at the Arden

I've now seen three productions of August: Osage County, and its appeal grows stronger each time. With a large cast of Philadelphia actors, director Terrence Nolen's vision of the Tracy Letts play unfolds powerfully and gives as much satisfaction as the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning 2007 Broadway production, and more than last year's touring company.

This play is an amalgam of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, about an addicted family, and The Big Chill, in which a group of people reunite after a death. You can add a soupçon of You Can't Take It With You, also set in an eccentric family's sprawling home.

The playwright's accomplishment is especially remarkable because details of plot venture close to soap opera. Lies, infidelities, seduction, embezzlement and resentments tumble out; and so does incestuous love Ó la Die Walküre.

Letts lifts the play above these particulars not by elevating his language but by making every situation relatable. The dialogue and the relationships ring true throughout a three-act, three-and-a-half-hour play that never seems long. August: Osage County is the most accessible of any of theater's "important" plays.

Natural laughs

This cast keeps things real, with none of the mugging that infected some actors in that national tour. Natural laughs emanate from the dark humorous asides of people under stress, and from the witty way they snipe at each other. (One daughter, deprecating her father's accomplishments, snaps, ""'Greatest Generation,' my ass. What makes them so great, anyway? Because they were poor and they hated Nazis? Who doesn't hate Nazis?")

Unlike the play's earlier productions, here the harsh words come less out of anger and more out of desperation; consequently we feel even more compassion. The worst of the characters come across as victims, not monsters. The Arden's thrust stage brings the cast closer to the audience, again increasing our involvement with the action.

Many characters are involved, and we get to know and understand each of them, thanks to Letts's skillful writing. Among those characters is the large home that the family lives in; its several floors are essential in understanding the flow of action from bottom to top, literally.

Belver's stunning portrayal

The patriarch (played by David Howey) is based on Letts's own college-professor father, Dennis Letts, who played the role until his death from cancer in 2008. The character is an alcoholic whose wife (Carla Belver) is addicted to prescription narcotics, a situation that naturally engenders comparisons with the works of Eugene O'Neill.

Belver, as the matriarch Violet, gives the performance of her distinguished career. This is a stunning portrayal of fear and anger. Howey's brief appearance is sufficiently notable that his presence remains long after his scene has ended.

Then we meet Violet's sister, Mattie Fay, played colorfully by Mary Martello, and the eldest and most resentful daughter, Barbara (Grace Gonglewski). Although each of these actors is a familiar stage personality, here they totally become denizens of Osage County, Oklahoma. The younger sisters, Ivy and Karen, are convincingly portrayed by Corinna Burns and Kathryn Petersen.

Compassionate men

The men in their lives are compassionately portrayed by actors whose names are not as well known but who deserve stardom too: Paul L. Nolan, Eric Hissom and Charlie DelMarcelle. Dylan Gelula is convincing as a 14-year-old granddaughter, and Elena Araoz as the Indian woman hired as housekeeper.

My only disappointment concerns the esteemed Anthony Lawton, who seems out of place as the new fiancé of one of the sisters. This character should be more suave and dashing; we shouldn't see how unsuitable he is until the action unfolds.

It may surprise Easterners, but this play reveals that residents of Oklahoma can be intensely literate. Case in point: the father, a successfully-published poet, delivers a sharp critique of T. S. Eliot, and the play ends with a quotation from Eliot's The Wasteland about how the world will end.♦


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