Mother's ruin rules the roost

By BAZ BAMIGBOYE

Last updated at 08:52 09 November 2007


Early on in Tracy Letts' new drama August: Osage County, we're given fair warning of what's in store when the alcoholic husband of the play's matriarch tells a woman he's hiring as a housekeeper that his wife is "cold-blooded, and not just in the metaphorical sense".

He was being kind. Violet Weston is that woman, and she's a monster! Talk about something wicked this way comes.

Violet, as played by Deanna Dunagan and directed by Anna D. Shapiro, is a storm who sweeps away all before her, whether it's her three daughters, her granddaughter, her nephew or any of the other family members who descend on Violet's house, near Tulsa, when the aforementioned husband goes missing.

We - all of us in the audience - exclaimed with shock and delight when one juicy revelation after another was revealed on stage.

"Thank God we can never tell the future. We'd never get out of bed," someone quips bitterly.

I should back up a tad and explain that Ms Dunagan's Violet pops more pills than all of the Britneys and Lindsays out there put together. She takes them for her mouth cancer and then more pills to ease the effects of the first pills, and so on.

But nothing takes the sting out of her poisonous tongue.

"See these blue babies, they are my best friends. You try and get them away from me and I'll eat you alive," Violet warns her eldest daughter, who tries to round up the trove of uppers and downers.

The play represents a landmark piece of writing by Mr Letts, whose first play, Killer Joe, was a hit several seasons back in London.

August: Osage County is, with due nods to Edward Albee and Eugene O'Neill, his blisteringly funny masterpiece, though.

The production comes from the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago and every one of the ensemble cast is brilliant.

It's this ensemble London producers David Pugh, Dafydd Rogers and Robert Fox (whom I understand have first refusal on the West End rights) must bring to London and, I'm guessing, to a Cameron Mackintosh-owned theatre (one of his top executives was in the same night as me).

And when they re-cast it with British actors, they must be right for the parts, not just stars for stars' sake.

Fasten your seatbelts for this one.

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