"August: Osage County" at Marin Theatre Company

Marin Theatre Company photo by Kevin Berne

I have been looking forward to this production ever since Marin Theatre Company announced its season. "August: Osage County" by Tracy Letts is a terrific play, and one my family and I enjoyed very much when it was at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2011. It's always tough to live up to a comparison like that, but I think I've got an open mind on the subject.

Quick summary of my reaction: I think they did a terrific job. It's a really strong start to their season, and a solid production all around. The show looks great--wonderful design work. And the cast does a good job. I have a few issues with some of the directorial choices, but overall, I quite liked the show.

Quick Roundup

"August: Osage County" was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2003, and has been a very popular play ever since. It's a story about a dysfunctional family headed by an alcoholic and a pill-popper, so you know it's going to be a wild ride. Will Marchetti as Beverly gets the play off to a very strong start with his opening scene, filling us in on the dynamics of his marriage with frequent references to his favorite poets. Beverly is a poet himself, as we shall see later in the play.

As we gradually meet the family, Beverly's wife, Violet, and her sister, Mattie Fae (really well played by Anne Darragh) and her husband, Charlie, then the Weston Girls (the three daughters of Beverly and Violet) and their men, we come to see the dysfunction that is the center of the play. And there is plenty of that to go around. Between substance abuse, emotional distance and neediness, and a good helping of small-town life, pretty much everyone has something demonstrably wrong with them, and the interactions take off.

Setting the Stage

Before I comment on the play, I need to enlarge on my earlier comment about the design work. I really like the way they've set this play. All the action takes place in the Weston family house, and I was interested to see how Marin would create this setting in their fairly intimate theater. The answer is that the entire stage is a house: you see the framing of the whole thing, which is quite brilliant. The centerpiece of the house is a huge, slanted table, where everyone will eventually sit for a big dinner. Given that the theater isn't very high, nor the seats raked steeply, the designers have cleverly made the whole table visible by making it the steep slope, and seating the actors accordingly. It's a wonderful way to make the whole family visible to the audience.

And I should add that when you enter the theater, you smell the wood, which helps the house to dominate the environment. In many ways the house is a big character in the play.

Similarly, because the stage is static and without a curtain, lighting is critical, and the lighting design and execution are really good. Characters kind of appear out of the dark as needed, and background characters often appear as silhouettes against various shaded back lights. It's an intricate and well done system that creates the ambiance nicely.

A Few Nits to Pick

I do have a few issues with the production. I remember the play as being funnier. I'm not clear whether it was a conscious choice by the director or perhaps just a really unresponsive audience this afternoon, but I wasn't getting a lot of the humor that is in the text. Admittedly, the family situation is bleak, but the humor (ranging from some just mildly ironic lines to some outright surreal stuff) really helps to both relieve the otherwise unrelenting awfulness of many of the events and characters, and perhaps more importantly, it humanizes and rounds the characters. I gather the movie version of this show (which I did not see) was almost entirely humorless. This production has some, but definitely not as much as I remember. Even when the audience laughs, you get the feeling the characters either can't or won't, and it seems a bit wrong.

The other bit that struck me as a bit off is a little harder to put my finger on. Ultimately, I think most of the characters just seem a bit too well. For all the years of emotional and substance abuse, everyone seems outwardly pretty OK, and that feels wrong, especially when it comes to Violet. She sort of bounces inexplicably between a pill-induced stupor and perfect lucidity. I'm OK with the character having those extremes, but Sherman Fracher's portrayal of Violet mostly seems too vigorous, and her daughters, for all their issues, seem a bit too healthy throughout.

Go See It

Even with those little caveats, it's a strong production of a good piece of writing, and well worth seeing. It's an excellent example of good stagecraft, and there are some very good performances.