RSS 2.0 FeedOctober 5, 2011, Theatre
KCRep goes local and reaps the rewards
Thanks to a remarkable collection of all-local talent, Kansas City Repertory Theatre opens its 2011–12 season with style and substance, debuting “August: Osage County,” the Tony-winning family drama that bursts with hilarity and heartbreak.
The combustible Weston family of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, may not be the kind of kin you would ever want to claim as your own, but joining them for a few hours in Kansas City Rep’s Spencer Theatre is one of the more rewarding ways you could spend an evening. This production of Tracy Letts’s award-winning August: Osage County is a statement-maker for the Rep, as Artistic Director Eric Rosen embarks on his fourth season in Kansas City. Rosen, who also staged this show, has assembled some of the area’s best actors, and they are backed by a veteran team of local designers and technical artists. The result should be deeply gratifying for anyone who loves theatre, and a source of civic pride for anyone who calls Kansas City home.
The form and texture of August is cast in the proud Eugene O’Neill/Tennessee Williams tradition of dysfunctional family drama at a moment of crisis. The one-time poet and full-time alcoholic Beverly Weston and his wife, Violet, who calms her own demons with any number of prescription pills, are tending a massive, empty nest on the Oklahoma plains—until Beverly’s mysterious disappearance starts to bring their far-flung family home. This includes Violet’s chatterbox sister and her relatively genteel husband, the three semi-estranged Weston sisters with their highly fallible male counterparts, and one pot-smoking granddaughter. And then there’s the live-in, Native-American housekeeper Beverly hired days before he vanished.
The dialogue, at times, may get a little too Aaron Sorkin-esque for these small-town folks who live 60 miles outside the big city—Tulsa—but the script is almost seamless. Plots twist. Bombshells drop believably. The results are tragic. And hilarious. And an ostensibly sad ending is nonetheless wholly satisfying.
All but a few of the characters we meet are star-crossed or fatally flawed. The late-summer heat is stifling (“My wife doesn’t believe in air-conditioning,” Bev explains as the play opens. “As if it were something to be disbelieved”), and everyone at times seems to be overcome by “a case of the Plains.” Happiness—hell, simple contentedness—is nowhere to be found. This may be Oklahoma, but it ain’t Oklahoma!
However, everything is certainly up-to-date in Kansas City. Having seen August twice on Broadway, I could not help but compare this all-local product to the version that won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Play. Is that fair? Well, sure, especially since, in some ways, the Rep’s version is superior.
Let’s start with the set, which is impressive. Whereas the New York production mixed a gritty forestage with a more abstract backdrop, Donald Eastman’s depiction of the Weston home is fully realized, from the water-stained walls and towering piles of books up to the boxes of old clothes stuffed in the attic and the cardboard-covered windows that block out all sunlight in accordance with Violet’s wishes.
The ensemble, meanwhile, is thirteen strong—strong being the operative word, with no weak links. Merle Moores's interpretation of the damaged, drug-addicted matriarch Violet is magnificent: mean, nasty—and ultimately sympathetic (without seeming any more justified in her meanness); she could readily understudy Deanna Dunagan, who won the Best Actress Tony in the role—or Dunagan could understudy her. The part of eldest daughter Barbara, who (in my opinion) emerges as this ensemble show’s true protagonist, requires the widest range, and Cheryl Weaver is more than up to the task.
Other well-knowns who bolster this production include Gary Neal Johnson, in a welcome gentle and calmly comic turn as Violet’s brother-in-law, Charlie. David Fritts, with dozens and dozens of local and regional credits, turns on the charm (and eventually the pedophilia) as youngest daughter Karen’s creepy fiancé. Kathleen Warfel does all she can to admirably contain the fireball that is Mattie Fae, Violet’s sister. And as Beverly Weston, Broadway and feature-film veteran Kip Niven sets the tone with his opening monologue. And the tone is just right.
In the recent past, under Rosen, the Rep has gained a reputation for bringing in the best talent—from New York, from California, from Chicago (particularly the Steppenwolf, where Rosen cut his teeth, and where he saw the original production of this play). But in his program note and pre-show remarks, Rosen explained that going local is a proud, conscious choice. The company is reasserting its hometown roots, even as it expands its national reach: days before August opened, the Rep announced that its co-production of the original musical Venice—wholly created in Kansas City with resident talent in 2010—had garnered eleven Los Angeles Ovation Award nominations, including for Best Musical. That show is also currently under development at the Public Theatre in New York.
As for the Westons of Osage County, you need to come see them for yourselves. For all its flaws, this is a well-intentioned, loving family. But love isn’t always enough to keep a family intact and see it flourish.
At Kansas City Rep, Rosen hopes, it is just the opposite. “Our strength is our roots right here,” he writes, “with our extraordinary family of artists and audiences that make the Rep’s many successes possible.”
Consider August: Osage County one more huge success for Kansas City Rep. And for Kansas City.
REVIEW:
Kansas City Rep
August: Osage County
By Tracy Letts
Directed by Eric Rosen
Runs September 16 through October 9 (Reviewed Friday, September 23, 2011)
James C. Olson Performing Arts Center, Spencer Theatre
UMKC Campus
4949 Cherry Street, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-235-2700 or online at www.kcrep.org
Top Photo: Cast of August: Osage County (Photo by Don Ipock)
Senior Editor, Theatre; Theatre and Features Contributor
Victor Wishna is a writer, editor, and author, among other things. A graduate of Stanford University and the New School's creative writing MFA program, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Sun, the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star, Humanities, and other major magazines and newspapers. He contributes a weekly real estate feature to the New York Post and his column “Letter from New York” is syndicated nationally.
With photographer Ken Collins, he published In Their Company: Portraits of American Playwrights (Umbrage Editions, 2006), for which he conducted and edited interviews with 61 prominent stage writers including Edward Albee, August Wilson, Tony Kushner, Wendy Wasserstein, and many others. The book won a 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal (www.intheircompany.com).
He has always maintained a love for theatre, as a writer, an audience member, and even an actor, appearing in several community and semi-professional productions. As an undergraduate, he studied acting and playwriting with Anna Deavere Smith, in addition to journalism and psychology (and not engineering or medicine).
After nearly 12 years in New York City, Victor recently returned to his hometown with his wife, Annie, also a K.C. native. When not writing for publication or pleasure, Victor is honing his stand-up routine, which he has performed at numerous clubs and special events around New York, the Midwest, and elsewhere. In June 2010, he was named New York’s second-funniest amateur Jewish comedian by The Jewish Week. Seriously.
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