Play Reading in English – August Osage County by Tracy Letts

HK English Speaking Union
  • Mon 15-08-2016 7:15 PM - 2 h

Colette Artbar

Free admission

Synopsis

August: Osage County is a Black Comedy genre play by American stage actor and playwright Tracy Letts. The play won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was subsequently adapted for the big screen, and starred Meryl Streep in the title role of the domineering family matriarch, Violet Weston with Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor and Benedict Cumberbatch in other roles. The play premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago on June 28, 2007. It had its Broadway debut at the Imperial Theatre on December 4, 2007, and the production transferred to the Music Box Theatre, closing in June, 2009, after 648 performances and 18 previews. The show made its UK Debut at London's National Theatre in November 2008.

 

In many ways August: Osage County recalls the concentrated naturalistic dramatic intensity of family plays by earlier North American naturalist dramatists, such as Eugene O'Neill (particularly Long Day's Journey into Night) and Tennessee Williams (particularly Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). The dramatic action takes place over the course of several weeks during a stiflingly hot summer in August inside the three-story home of Beverly and Violet Weston outside Pawhuska, Oklahoma. The play opens with a prologue. Beverly Weston, a once-famous poet, is interviewing Johanna, a young Native American woman, for a position as live-in cook and caregiver for his wife Violet, who is being treated for mouth cancer due to heavy cigarette use for most of her life. Violet is addicted to several different kinds of prescription drugs and exhibits paranoia and mood swings. Beverly, who freely admits that he himself is an alcoholic, discusses Violet's current problems, and hints at the dysfunctional family history which will be made apparent to the reader/audience in subsequent acts of the play. Following this opening prologue we discover that Beverly has disappeared and the three acts of the play chart the family's inadequate efforts to trace his whereabouts. Violet's three daughters, Ivy, Mattie and Karen arrive at different points of the first act with their family members in tow, and the rest of the play features the intense conflicts that take place within the four walls of Violet's home. The matriarch's lacerating tongue and vicious irony dominate the proceedings, especially at meal-times and gradually the layers of characters' everyday personas are peeled away to reveal the damage wrought by their abusive family history, with the mystery of the father Beverly's disappearance hanging over the family like a storm-cloud.

 

Please note that the play is quite long (conventional three-act naturalistic drama) so we will need to read it relatively fast. Everyone is of course welcome to read, but some slower readers may prefer just to listen. The movie has the same title and is available on DVD and can probably be streamed or accessed on Netflix, etc. Watching beforehand would give a good insight into the nature of the play.

All are welcome whether you wish to read or just listen.

Facilitator: Dr. Mike Ingham


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