August: Osage County
August: Osage County
By Tracy Letts
Directed by Frank Hilgenberg
Starring Cira Larkin, Monica Travers, Marcie Schwalm, Katrina Tharin
Theatre Downtown, Orlando, FL</strong>
What if George and Martha really DID have a kid? Or how about a whole alcohol fueled, drug addled, sex crazed, incestuous family, with each member wielding equal amounts of vitriol, spite, and occasional southern charm? That would approach the evil vibes let loose in the Weston clan after Pater Familias Beverly (Pat Kelly) gives us an exposition download and then disappears mysteriously. His wife Violet (Larkin) buries the pain in a pill bottle as this extended and dissolute family comes together for one of those mega-hate fests modern playwrights gravitate toward.
The heavy lifting falls on Larkin’s shoulders, even when she’s babbling incoherently you can tell she’s not just vamping. Her late life goal is to point out how much she sacrificed for her ingrate daughters, what terrible women they grew up to be and how it’s all their own damn fault. Then she starts babbling on about “truth” which it the cue for the audience to hunker down behind their programs. Truth, after all, is what makes drama from real life. We all could spend a lifetime deluding our selves, but were Tracy Letts turned loose on us, and we’d be a pile of orange pulp in less than five minutes.
Acting as surrogate for the audience is the completely likable hired help Johanna (Natalie Reed). She’s the only one not on some evil trip and she coos “I really need the work.” Part of her assignment is dealing with the collapsing Aiken family with its Forrest Gumpy son Little Charles (Michael Ealy), some comes from the imploding marriage of the academic Fordhams and their pot smoking daughter (Leslie Penuel, Pete Penuel, and Sarah Andrew) and part comes from sympathy for Ivy’s (Travers) awkward love story. But the real creep is Karen’s (Schwalm) fiancé Steve (Dean Walkuski.) I’ve never wanted to pick up a 13 year old girl, but he showed me how it’s done.
Brutal yet fascinating, this show is long and keeps battering you just hard enough so you don’t pass out. Tim DeBaun’s set look pleasant enough, but we know the moral of all popular entertainment – those who look comfortable and respectable on the outside are seething cauldrons of misery on the inside.
For more information on Theatre Downtown, please visit http://www.theatredowntown.net
