Confronting dive into the difficulties of normal life
8 September 2024Review by Arne Sjostedt. This review originally appeared in Canberra CityNews on 6 Sep 2024
This was a production with a rich seam of interest that ran from beginning to end.
It was a long show, which seemed to take you beyond your limits of perseverance, much like life can do. And perhaps that was the point. “Life is very long,” wrote TS Eliot, in his poem The Hollow Men – lines from which bookend the play.
August: Osage County doesn’t pull any punches. A black comedy, it delves into the difficulties of normal life. It deftly presents how families become their own entities, create their own rules and have their own secrets. And around that, create their own way of coming together and, at times, erupting into conflict.
The atmosphere is sticky with heat, and the situation almost disturbingly familiar, even within the constraints of its abnormal circumstances: A father and husband has disappeared, and a mother (his wife), is unwell and addicted to pills. The family collects around her, and relationships are explored.
It is not surprising this play was made into the 2013 film of the same name, which garnered Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts Academy Award nominations. However, it also won Ensemble of the Year, at the Hollywood Film Festival.
This is the kind of play that inspires that kind of production. Here, under the direction of Cate Clelland, the cast achieved that end. Strong acting from each actor ensured the at times uncomfortable story was played out supremely well.
A cluttered, but comforting set allowed the machinations of family life to be played out, and conjured up the kind of feelings that seem to settle into just about any family situation.
It was a journey that felt like going on a family holiday in a car for three hours, going through the rhythms and difficulties that can bring, and coming out the other side with a sense of relief and feeling you’ve survived something.
Set against some unsettling, yet also somehow comfortable blues music playing between scenes, like the blues – August: Osage County isn’t about what is good in life. It challenges you to find what is good within the unavoidable tension and difficulty the unglamorous, at times dark, imperfect opportunity to live can bring.