Review – August: Osage County, Stage Whispers

14 September 2024

This review by John P. Harvey was originally published on Stage Whispers.

At the opening of Tracy Letts’s classic 2008 family drama August: Osage County, the Weston family’s head, Beverley Weston, welcomes to the family home a young woman he has hired to help around the house.  We learn that his wife, Violet, accepts his drinking habit and that he accepts her pill habit, and that the help is for her in her unpredictability.  Beverley’s disappearance shortly thereafter brings his daughters and their families to the home to support Violet; everyone hopes that he has gone on a bender and will soon return.

And it’s in the background to his disappearance that devastating family secrets begin to unravel.

The play is one of lifelong, almost epic conflicts: between honour and self-fulfilment, between honesty and peace, and ultimately between self interest and family.

This tale depends heavily for its power on the ability of many of its cast to weave that spell of believability that allows them to convey depth or complexity of character, and it requires direction that draws out relevant undercurrents relating to its clever plotting.  In this, the production excels: all the characters on stage, from the unassuming  housemaid Johnna (played by Andrea Garcia) to the mesmerising out-of-control Violet, played by the astonishingly talented Karen Vickery, live and breathe their roles.  The production is especially fortunate to be using again three talents who played the same roles in Free-Rain’s 2014 production of the play: the always personable David Bennett, as Beverley Weston; the mesmerising Karen Vickery, as his wife, Violet; and Michael Sparks, as the slightly bumbling Charlie Aiken.  The reprise ten years later of the roles of these three and the earlier production’s director, Cate Clelland, brings to the present production an enviable solidity.

The Hub’s movable, moderately tiered seating works better for some sets than for others, and in this instance it’s advantageous for some scenes to be seated toward the front.  But much of the action is larger than life, and the number of dramas playing out simultaneously in some scenes could take your breath away.  Up to twelve cast members are on stage at one time, all with speaking parts, and the set has been well designed to keep the entire home in view, with lighting subtly drawing our attention hither and yon.

John P. Harvey.

Image: August: Osage County.  Photographer: Janelle McMenamin.