This is the dead land / This is cactus land….T.S. Eliot
It is hot; the setting is dark. Welcome to the maelstrom of the “Weston” family, Tracy Letts’ spellbinding play August: Osage County, among the best American plays ever written. Palm Beach Dramaworks’ production is a riveting, gut-wrenching, fast-paced 3 plus hours with as much emotional impact as can be wrought on stage. The disintegrating Weston family is a metaphor for American civilization itself.
The setting and the characters are very personal to the playwright, having grown up in Oklahoma, not far from Osage County. Director William Hays perfectly renders Letts’ disturbing story, encouraging the actors to find their own sense of realism in delivering this unforgettable performance.
Letts deals with big bold multi-layered themes even prophetic ones given what has transpired since the play was first staged in 2007. Oklahoma was the destination of the infamous Trail of Tears, the result of Andrew Jackson’s “Indian Removal “policy. Letts conflates this original American sin with the decline (and with his latest play, The Minutes, the destruction) of the American Dream.
In a Prologue, we meet Beverly, a disillusioned, aging, one-published-volume poet, and the patriarch of the Weston family with its generational dysfunctional maladies of infidelity, alcoholism, and drug dependency. He is interviewing a housekeeper, Johnna, a young Cheyenne woman.
Beverly alludes to poets T.S. Elliot and John Berryman. Born in Oklahoma, Berryman suffered from alcoholism and depression. In 1972 he committed suicide. Not coincidentally, the worn Weston family home in the play is vintage 1972, although set in 2007.
He commends a T.S. Eliot work to Johnna, citing perplexing, disillusioned lines from the poet’s The Hollow Men beginning a framing device for the play, a portrait of the corrupted soul of the Weston family. And so, the audience too, is drawn into their story.
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Family Dinner at the Weston Home Photo by Alicia Donelan
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This production features Sara Morsey in an impressive PBD debut as Violet Weston, Beverly’s bitter and manipulative pain pill addicted wife. Her performance is electric, capable of rising from appearing nearly normal to being completely delusional, but even in her drug impaired state (or especially) she is capable of masterfully hurling the slings and arrows of invectives and recriminations, brandishing a sword of guilt, a textbook rageaholic. It is her form of truth-telling. She was carefully taught, admitting to her daughters during one calm moment in the play my mama was a nasty, mean old lady. I suppose that’s where I get it from.
Beverly is inured to her, and counters with his long-time addiction: alcoholism. There are so many memorable scenes featuring Sara Morsey but her cathartic, abandoned and seductive dance to "Lay Down Sally," is a view into Violet’s primordial inner character and youth. It is a role which rivals Mary Tyrone’s in Long Day’s Journey into Night. Morsey’s explosive performance as Violet Weston rises to that level.
Ryffin Phoenix, Sara Morsey, Kathy McCafferty Photo by
Alicia Donelan
Beverly Weston is played by Dennis Creaghan, a long-time PBD veteran, with a resigned miasma of defeat. He has gone missing after hiring the Cheyenne housekeeper Johnna who is played by Ryffin Phoenix, her PBD debut, with a quiet dignity and steadfastness lacking in the other characters. Beverly quotes Eliot to her, “Life is long”, and then leaves for his date with oblivion.
Beverly’s sudden, inexplicable disappearance brings together the three Weston daughters, all bearing family scars.
Kathy McCafferty is the eldest daughter Barbara Fordham, the other leading role in the play. McCafferty is no stranger to iconic PBD productions, having played Blanche in Streetcar Named Desire, Regina, in The Little Foxes, and Rosemary, in Outside Mullingar. It is another McCafferty bravura performance tracing her character’s devolution from the “in charge” rival to her mother to the clear successor to her parents’ hopelessness, left with her father’s bottle of scotch, occupying her father’s desk chair reprising his interview with Johnna, and then a demoralized exit, not understanding her ineffectiveness. It is yet another leading role which McCafferty makes her own with her astounding command of a wide range of emotions.
Kathy McCafferty, , Sara Morsey. Bruce Linser Photo by
Alicia Donelan
She has brought her 14 year old daughter, Jean, deftly played by Allie Beltran, back to the family home. Jean is struggling with her parents’ separation, as well as the normal angst of a teen thrown into a strange environment. Barbara’s estranged husband, Bill, has come to support his soon to be ex-wife. Bill, compassionately performed by Bruce Linser, is a university professor who is having an affair with one of his students.
Margery Lowe, another long time acclaimed veteran of the Dramaworks stage is Ivy Weston, the fragile middle daughter, who carries the load of having spent years living near her childhood home and dysfunctional parents. She is now carrying on a clandestine relationship with “Little Charles” (Iain Batchelor, his mainstage PBD debut) who she thinks is her cousin, and has a fantastical hope of moving to New York with him in the near future. However this dream is as potentially stillborn as her two other sister’s expectations are for happiness in their own lives.
The youngest daughter, Karen Weston, is gregariously performed by Niki Fridh, who is constantly trying to find validation. She moved far away to Florida in an effort to ultimately find Mr. Right after a long string of Mr. Wrongs. She brings home her fiancé, a thrice married, pot smoking, sleaze, Steve, played to perfection by Christopher Daftsios, another PBD newcomer. All she can focus on is a long fantasized honeymoon in Belize.
Further complicating the combustible plot, as secrets are exposed, is Violet’s overbearing sister, Mattie Fae Aiken, masterfully played by PBD veteran Laura Turnbull, a difficult role as she is mostly loathsome. She arrives with her henpecked husband, Charlie, to provide the obligatory support to her sister, while displaying an atavistic viciousness towards her adult son "Little" Charles, more understandable as a dark secret is revealed at the end of the play.
Her husband, Charlie, is skillfully performed by Stephen Trovillion, his PBD debut. His acting chops are equal to his comic ones as he demonstrates when asked to say grace before the disastrous family dinner. Although he (like the other men in the play) is ineffectual, in the end he and Bill have their stand-up-to-their-wives moments. They are unfortunately both failed peacemakers.
That same dinner scene displays Iain Batchelor’s fine acting, struggling, as “Little” Charles, to rise above humiliation to make, unsuccessfully, an announcement concerning his love for much put-upon Ivy. It is painful to watch although a skillful and affecting performance.
As family scars and secrets are peeled away, and old worn dysfunctional roads are traveled, the play finally devolves into a hopeless whimper, completing the T.S. Eliot framing for the play. The sole survivor, indeed the caretaker for this defeated family, is the noble Johnna, who we can see in the attic, calmly reading T.S. Eliot as the family erupts and disintegrates below. In a pouch she wears her umbilical cord around her neck, a Cheyenne tradition of her soul having a destination when she dies. And where do the Weston family souls go? Or Western Civilization for that matter?
It is not only the destruction of a single family but symbolically of “the dream,” the American Dream of success, happiness, the next generation being better off than the last, of equal opportunity. But Manifest Destiny was a corrupt foundation.
Kathy McCafferty ruminatively delivers Barbara’s monologue that encapsulates the play: One of the last times I spoke with my father, we were talking about ... I don't know, the state of the world, something ... and he said, "You know, this country was always pretty much a whorehouse, but at least it used to have some promise. Now it’s just a shithole." And I think now maybe he was talking about something else, something more specific, something more personal to him ... this house? This family? His marriage? Himself? I don't know. But there was something sad in his voice--or no, not sad, he always sounded sad-something more hopeless than that. As if it had already happened. As if whatever was disappearing had already disappeared. As if it was too late. As if it was already over. And no one saw it go. This country, this experiment, America, this hubris: what a lament, if no one saw it go. Here today, gone tomorrow.--- Dissipation is actually much worse than cataclysm. (Or as T.S. Eliot wrote “Not with a bang but with a whimper.”)
Offsetting these heavy themes, Letts plants land mines of acerbic humor and F bombs galore; yes, some sudden laugh out loud moments, unusual in a great American tragedy. No other drama can compare, although August has other similarities to the works by Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Eugene O’Neil, Arthur Miller and Sam Shepard (works of all have been produced at PBD). Letts provides subtle hat tips to the great American playwrights, including the pivotal role of a safe deposit box, awakening memories of Lillian Hellman’s Little Foxes.
Multiple Scenes in the Weston Home Photo by Alicia
Donelan
The production successfully stages those difficult scenes where multiple conversations are going on. This is especially true of the post funeral family dinner where Violet of all people reprimands the group that this is a funeral dinner not a cock fight. It is a prelude to a down and dirty family wrestle-mania match: disturbing and realistically staged. Hayes had the assistance of David Hyland who not only admirably played the part of Sheriff Gilbeau, but served as Fight Choreographer as well.
This may be Hayes’ directorial masterpiece, his passion for the play becoming part of the fabric, the staging so organic. He has created Letts’ vision of a window into which, we, the audience, can view these sometimes oh so uncomfortable truths. Some will relate more than others to these flawed characters. All will leave the theater, somewhat stunned and emotionally drained and yet entertained. He cast the play perfectly and led the actors to places rarely seen.
The technical crew of PBD has created the right ambiance for this epic play. The scenic design is by Michael Amico who has designed scores of previous PBD productions. The multiple locations of the moody, dark prairie house are on full display. The windows are covered so there is no differentiation between night and day. They live in the shadows as T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Men.
Lighting atmosphere by Kirk Bookman enhances the realism and keeps the audience focused. There are exceptional lighting moments such as the one on Violet in her first drug induced appearance at the top of the stairs and the flickering TV light drawing in Charlie, Little Charlie, and Jean.
Resident Costume Designer Brian O’Keefe has created everyday clothing emphasizing the distinctive characters in the play. Funeral attire is black, the women in dresses except for Ivy’s pants suit to which Violet cuttingly says You look like a magician’s assistant. And O’Keefe’s costume does. Violet's stunning funeral dress fits her to perfection. O’Keefe, can build any wardrobe piece single-handedly.
Roger Arnold’s sound design embeds microphones in the walls to capture actors speaking with their backs to us, and ones to carry the sounds of overlapping conversations. It is a cacophony of family factions arguing at different points on the set as you can see Jean with her hands on her ears. The western sounds of the harmonica fill the brief transitional scenes.
This is a high energy, passionate production of one of the great American plays. The experience of seeing it on the intimate Palm Beach Dramaworks stage in West Palm Beach is extraordinary.
