By Carol Davis
SAN DIEGO — On the way out of the Old Globe Theatre during the second intermission of Tracy Letts’s 3 1/2 hour family drama, August: Osage County, the woman sitting next to me remarked that the Weston family of Letts’s drama made her family look good! My guess is, many in the audience might agree and many may see similarities to this group up on stage, hopefully though not quite as intense!
Tracy Letts’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning dark family saga makes the wicked stepsister’s and stepmother in Disney’s Cinderella seem like your next-door cookie swapping neighbors. The Weston Family in Lett’s brutally honest and somewhat disturbing ‘family’ comedy/drama devour each other like the four characters in Yasmina Reza’s God Of Carnage now playing at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles through the 29th.
The Westons, all five, take no hostages and none of them including the matriarch Violet (Lois Markle) has many redeeming qualities. With all the drama swirling around the Weston Family, the real spotlight here is the demise, decentralization, dissatisfaction, dysfunction and discordance of the American Family and way of life as most would like to look back at it or maybe just in the Plains States. Lest we forget as well, mother daughter relationships/competition are sometimes the hardest to reconcile and this family of females is no different.
Lett’s story takes place in the rambling (David Zinn) three-story family home of Beverly Weston (Robert Foxworth) smack dab in the middle of a family crisis. His three daughters grew up there. Ivy (Carla Harting) is single and a professor at Pawhuska College who harbors a huge secret, and is the middle daughter. She still lives in Osage and is the first contact in a crisis. The other two flew the coop years earlier.
Oldest daughter Barbara (Angela Reed) lives in Colorado and is a college professor whose marriage is on the rocks (her husband is having an affair with one of his young college students) and their fourteen-year old daughter, Jean (Ronete Levenson) is as screwed up (she smokes pot) and is growing up way too fast. Keep your eyes on her becoming her mother. Scary. Youngest Weston, daughter Karen (Kelly McAndrew) is still looking for the ‘Bluebird of Happiness” following one disappointment after another.
Now Beverly and his wife Vi live together alone in an unholy alliance. She takes pills and he drinks and that’s been their arrangement for years. (“That’s the bargain we’ve struck…just one of the bargains, just one paragraph of our marriage contract…”). She takes everything from Valium, Vicodin, Darvon, Darvocet, Percodan, and Xanax to OxyContin and Dilaudid, some just for fun and some in a pinch. And just so you get a clearer picture, Vi doesn’t think she needs treatment for her habit.
Vi is suffering from mouth cancer (an irony of major proportions since the remarks that come out of it are as sick and lethal as her diagnosis) and Beverly is still reciting lines from T.S. Eliot and sifting through old manuscripts and papers (scattered all around his study) from a bygone era when he taught and wrote poetry (He was a world-class poet in his day) at the University. Both are walking zombies. The one difference between the two is that Beverly has already said ‘Uncle’ and Vi is still on the warpath.
It gets so hot in August in Osage County, Oklahoma, the largest county in the state, that “tropical birds … had died of the heat.” Their home and property is in the town of Pawhuska and that’s where Karen and Barbara are summoned by Ivy to deal with the disappearance of their father. All three and their spouses, Bill (Joseph Adams), Barbara’s husband and daughter Jean along with Steve (Robert Maffia), Karen’s fiancé, converge to support Vi and Ivy and try to solve the mystery of the missing Beverly.
And what would a family circle look like if Vi’s sister and brother-in-law, Mattie Fae (Robin Pearson Rose) and Charles (Guy Boyd gentle soul in a family of soulless beings) and their adult (he’s 37) yet challenged son ‘Little Charles’ (Haynes Thigpen) were left out of the family portrait? No such luck as they all pour into the Weston home. In this mix is Johnna, (Kimberly Guerrero) the young Native American beauty Beverly hired, before she went MIA, to help with the household chores and watch over Violet.
With deft direction, spot-on focus by Sam Gold and an all-star cast we are taken on Lett’s family odyssey fresh out of the starting gate with Beverly’s instructions and, if you will, slight intro into the disaster about to happen as he converses with Johnna about his family. Foxworth, whose only appearance is in this one scene, sets the tone, in his usual understated manner, and while he is no longer physically there, his presence is felt throughout especially at the funereal dinner in his honor? when the sparks of the family ignite and all the rest, as they say, is just the frosting on the cake.
All three of the Weston women have their turn at unearthing some golden tidbit about growing up a Weston and how it has affected their loves into their adult worlds and careers. Sibling rivalry, family trust and secrets and gotcha moments are fired at rapid pace as each one goes after the other gently and reconciliatorily at first but later growing to pariah proportions before all leave exhausted, chewed up and spat out at play’s end.
But the key to the Weston family mentality is matriarch Violet, a devious, cynical, chain smoking and sick addict who is hell bent on emotionally breaking her offspring while seemingly devoid of any emotional needs of her own. Embodying her spirit, stick thin and wearing a slip (most of the time) Lois Markle is simply amazing as she beats her daughters down by taking aim at the weakest point in their personalities and somehow, with all the pill popping, knows exactly what is going on, with each and every one of her offspring.
While she professes love and admiration for Barbara she points out that she is no spring chicken. She has Ivy scared to death to tell her anything about her personal life, constantly criticizing her for not being married and Karen admits that she has been unhappy all her life and had to move away as far as Florida. On top of that she has the chutzpah to play ‘who was Dad’s favorite’, Beverly against Karen. All three women have their moments and it’s difficult to single one out from the other given their impaired view of the world at the start.
Robin Pearson Rose, a long time Globe favorite is her usual strong self as Violet’s staunchest supporter yet a more humane younger sister. She too drops a bomb or two along the way as does Karen’s fiance, Steve, who no matter what Karen believes, is another snake oil deviate that she’s willing to hitch her star on. Ronete Levenson’s Jena is also full of surprises as is ‘Little Charles’. (Hayes Thigpen is a tough act to follow and does it well.) Joseph Adam’s Bill, Barbara’s soon-to-be-divorced husband, carries out his duties as the cheatin’ hubby with consistency and Kimberly Guerrero’s Johnna seemed a little creepy especially at the end when after so much damage, so much is left in the air. It’s the story that keeps on giving.
Last year I trained it up to Los Angeles to this show and didn’t want it to end even after over three hours. I can still hear it. This is a big show for the Old Globe and I was stoked when I learned they were staging it. David Zinn’s awesome and huge set, Clint Ramos’ period costumes, Japhy Weideman’s lighting and Fitz Patton’s sound design combined with stellar acting makes this one odyssey worth taking and one hazzah for the Old Globe.
PS. Disclosure: I have three daughters. Any information concerning family is tucked away in an unspecified underground vault. Speculate!
See you at the theatre.
Dates: through June 12th
Organization: Old Globe Theatre
Phone: 619-234-5623
Production Type: comedy/drama
Where: 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park
Ticket Prices: $29.00-$85.00
Web: theoldglobe.org
Venue: Old Globe Theatre, Conrad Prebys Theatre Center
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Davis is a San Diego-based theatre critic. She may be contacted at www.gcsummit.com