August: Osage County

Tracy Letts' 2008 Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning play August: Osage County lives up to its hype and accolades in an outstanding touring production now at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater (to 12/20). Starring Estelle Parsons and an accomplished ensemble cast of twelve, the show unfolds as a modern tragicomedy for women, about women - men are largely ineffectual or absent - and examines the effects of abuse and addiction across generations while pulling out all stops in the humor department. Mother-daughter conflicts pop up repeatedly as do the fears that each child will become her mother. The genetic defect on the House of Weston looks to be carried on the X-gene.

Director Anna Shapiro orchestrates and conducts Mr. Letts's script with a keen eye for nuance, fine feel of pacing, and a delicious sense of the absurd, smoothing out all the rough edges and getting all the laughs. August revolves around a sixtyish couple - one an indomitable matriarchal presence (Violet Weston superbly realized by Estelle Parsons), the other an acquiescing, alcoholic absence of a father (Beverly Weston played with world weariness by Jon DeVries), a professor who's had one big early success as a writer - and their strained relationship with their three daughters. (The overt and subtle demands of the two parents have largely determined their modest career paths - a take-home message for over-achieving parents: to your children, you are a tough act to follow.) On the periphery are a spouse, teenage daughter, and a significant other; another family (Violet's sister, her husband, and son); and a servant, an outsider. A crime (of the heart) has been committed, but to whom and when will not be apparent until much later.

August is a well-made play, performed naturalistically with a sharp comic edge helped with great dialogue, and contains a bumper of discoveries and reversals. It has a screenplay's three-act format in structure and composition: Act I sets up the inciting incident (Beverly Weston's disappearance) and first plot point (Violet Weston's addiction); Act II deals with a daughter's confrontation of the mother and usurpation of power, introducing the second plot point (abuse and addictions are reenacted); and Act III leads to a resounding climax. While the show will inevitably find its way to Hollywood, it also seems a good candidate for opera, with clearly defined, idiosyncratic characters and a fatalistic outcome.

The script nonetheless seems conventional at times: there's a stereotyped Native American (Johnna portrayed by DeLanna Studi with quiet conviction) who is the repository of all good; repeated simulated or implied marijuana usage that is extreme to the point of being a cliché; and a concluding plot twist that has been around and impressed critics since the Greeks. The malaise that has gripped this clan is almost an offshoot of No Country For Old Men: we've had it too good, for too long and are suffering the consequences.

Looking more like the sexagenarian Violet than her stated age of 82, Ms. Parsons is one Big Mama as she strides the boards, a natural force of nature, almost supernatural at times as she casts her spell, particularly with her children who are sucked into the black hole of her personality disorder.

Each of the three daughters has developed a distinct strategy or coping mechanism to deal with the internal standard of their parents: Don't Settle for Less (i.e., Don't Be Like Us). Barbara (Shannon Cochran), the oldest, opts out - she distances herself and tries for a conventional family life with husband Bill (played with equanimity by Jeff Still) and teenaged Jean (Emily Kinney); Ivy (Angelica Torn) - she's the one who stayed at home - retreats, chameleon-like, hiding within the woodwork; Karen (Amy Warren), the youngest, latches on to others in relationships (Steve, the latest, played with slime ball perfection by Lawrence Lau) and uses self-help to maintain her stability.

Ms. Cochran does the play's heavy lifting, fighting battles on her own home front with her estranged spouse and terrible teen daughter, while waging all-out war with her drug-addled mother; she's left to pick up the pieces in this family feud. Ms. Warren as the needy Karen comes on like gangbusters, delivering a comic tour-de-force with 101 gestures and vocal inflections designed to get her way. As Ivy, Ms. Torn is Thursday's child, a project for everyone's extreme makeover,;she'll have to travel far indeed to establish her own narrative.

In another orbit, Violet's equally forceful sister Mattie Fae (Libby George) calls the shots in a parallel family psychodrama with her accepting hubby Charlie (played with mannerly stoicism by Paul Vincent O'Connor) and cowed son Little Charles (Stephen Riley Key). Ms. George gives a Southern-Belle turn to her loquacious character, equal parts honeyed-charm and dagger-twisting harpy.

Marcus Nelson as Sheriff Deon Gilbeau serves capably as the play's bearer of bad tidings and hope for renewal.

Everyone's into enabling and mythmaking in the respective families, when they aren't demeaning or scapegoating those next down on this food chain; if there were a dog in the play it would be kicked, repeatedly.

The three-level, exposed beam doll's house set of scenic designer Todd Rosenthal lays bare the emotional escapades, and while imposing, sits like an 800-lb gorilla on stage. The faded pastels of costumer Ana Kusmanic and probing lighting of Ann Wrightson give a parched and stark look to this Bates-like abode. Original music between scenes by David Singer starts sultry and ends tense, as things heat up, with pizzicato strings; and Richard Woodbury adds any needed sound during the action. This is one of the few plays of this nature in which design, though striking, does not overwhelm the production: it's the acting and script that stand out.

By the play's final scene, we'll all find out that the aggression masks a deeper problem: there's one big secret and one staggering blind spot to shine a light on before the curtain goes dark. A quotation from T.S. Eliot opens and closes the play, but the most of the rest is best served by another from the poet: "Humankind cannot stand very much reality."

Sound check: Moderate to loud sound levels at scene changes. Miking of actors sounded artificial at times

Program notes: Very good, with an extended article and Weston Family Tree

Applause meter: 4+ hands, highly recommended. Strong characters and sharp dialogue distinguish script, while acting, direction, and design are all superb. Mature themes, with excessive profanity, simulated drug use, verbal abuse, and other taboos

Runtime: 3 hours and 25 minutes with 2 intermissions

Photo credits: Lance Iverson/San Francisco Chronicle