Things get truly heated in the play August: Osage County, which opened Friday night at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. Tracy Letts won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for this amazing story that manages to compress laughter, tears, rage and shock into three acts with two intermissions that combine to span three hours.
The show rocks along splendidly, despite its length, thanks to the Rep's producing artistic director, Robert Hupp, who extracts measured performances from the cast of 13.
Ten of those are members -- or prospective members -- of the Weston family, ensconced in a venerable (but not air-conditioned) house on the Oklahoma plains. No one escapes the wrath of the superbly talented Susanne Marley as family matriarch Violet Weston, although the Rep's former patriarch, Cliff Fannin Baker, does "escape" from his role as Violet's alcoholic, has-been poet and husband, Beverly Weston, after only 10 minutes, as the play opens and soon focuses on his disappearance and (spoiler alert) later discovery as a suicide victim.
As Violet, a cancer patient and major consumer of pharmaceuticals, confronts the situation in various ditzy yet hilarious outbursts, her three daughters arrive in various states of helplessness, burdened with their own problems and secrets. LeeAnne Hutchison is remarkable as Barbara, the eldest daughter, who has a dilemma with a wayward husband and their pot-smoking teen, Jean, played by veteran young actress Mary Katelin Ward (whose fine work here is an indicator of a great future).
Brenny Rabine slowly comes on strong as middle daughter Ivy, whose dreams are shattered by her mother and sister Barbara's professed well-meaning revelations. Kathy McCafferty, is youngest daughter Karen, whose similar quest for love and happiness is doomed by her naive choice of a future mate, sleazily played by Marc Carver.
Natalie Canerday, one of the state's finest and funniest actresses, as Mattie Mae Aiken, is a match for her sister, Violet, in the invective department, as she spreads around her delightfully abusive insults against her son and husband, as well as at Violet. Cassandra Seidenfeld rises above it all in her role as the quietly competent housekeeper, Johnna Monevata, a local American Indian who maintains, stoically, that she needs the work.
And set designer Mike Nichols, as always, merits mention for the amazing creation of the Weston house, which deserves the description of the play's 14th character. The set looks like a home anyone would be happy to have lived in, despite the unhappiness of its present and past inhabitants.
The show, which contains adult language and content, continues through June 21 at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, at Sixth and Main streets in Little Rock. Performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 7 p.m. Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with matinees at 2 p.m. Sundays.
Metro on 06/07/2015