Last Saturday, I saw “August: Osage County,” a play that originated with the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago and has gotten rave reviews since it moved to the Imperial Theater in New York City for a limited run.
To say the three-act play was merely about an unhappy family reunion would be a disservice to the author, Terry Letts. I’m not a theater critic, but it was to my mind an outstanding piece of work about the great, complicated, never fully predictable mess of life…and I’ll just leave it at that.
It begins with a monologue from the family patriarch, a heavy drinking poet and college professor who later disappears thereby prompting the reunion of three sisters and other assorted family members, including their preternaturally nasty, pill-popping mothe.
The father was played by Dennis Letts, who in real life was the 73-year-old father of the playwright.
I say “was,” because Dennis Letts died the night before I saw the Saturday matinee. The audience wasn’t informed of that fact. All we knew is that Letts was being replaced by an understudy. I didn’t know Letts had succombed to a five-month bout of cancer until I saw his obituary yesterday.
I’m sure the actors knew, however. And I’m guessing they were told of his passing before Saturday’s afternoon performance.
Their work was electrifying. They acted their hearts out.
When the play was over, the audience gave them a standing ovation. Some of the actors were crying. Standing on the stage, they looked up to the balcony and pointed to someone and clapped for that person, whoever it was. Now I think perhaps it was Terry Letts, or someone else who had been close to the dead actor.
In all the years I’ve been going to the theater, I’d never seen anything like it. This was irony, to say the least.