|
August: Osage County | 
 enlarge | Author: Tracy Letts
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $7.72
You Save: $6.23 (45%)
New (43) Used (12) from $7.72
Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 4548
Media: Paperback
Pages: 152
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.4
ISBN: 1559363304
Dewey Decimal Number: 812.6
EAN: 9781559363303
ASIN: 1559363304
Publication Date: February 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New and Factory Sealed Item Fast Shipping
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama "A tremendous achievement in American playwriting: a tragicomic populist portrait of a tough land and a tougher people."-Time Out New York "Tracy Letts' August: Osage County is what O'Neill would be writing in 2007. Letts has recaptured the nobility of American drama's mid-century heyday while still creating something entirely original."-New York magazine One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent Broadway history, August: Osage County is a portrait of the dysfunctional American family at its finest-and absolute worst. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed. The three-act, three-and-a-half-hour mammoth of a play combines epic tragedy with black comedy, dramatizing three generations of unfulfilled dreams and leaving not one of its thirteen characters unscathed. After its sold-out Chicago premiere, the play has electrified audiences in New York since its opening in November 2007. Tracy Letts is the author of Killer Joe, Bug, and Man from Nebraska, which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His plays have been performed throughout the country and internationally. A performer as well as a playwright, Letts is a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where August: Osage County premiered.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 23 more reviews...
 Summer and Smoke (and Pills) February 11, 2008
D. N. Stone (Stamford, CT United States)
24 out of 29 found this review helpful
When The Stern Librarian saw this show in New York recently she heard lot of debate at intermission (both of them!) about whether Tracy Letts has a written a classic to stand with the best of Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams, or whether the play is a Carol Burnett spoof of those masters. Anyone who thinks this play is nothing but a bawdy of exchange of insults and swears (and catfights about catfish) should read the published play. On the page it is abundantly clear that the poetry quoted in the lovely opening scene by the doomed husband finds its messy, human correlative in the scenes that follow, with language so memorable it deserves to be printed on t-shirts and sold in the lobby. This is a masterpiece from beginning to end, from August to tragic December. The Stern Librarian (I get a lot of reading done in the TKTS booth).
 Osage Can You See February 16, 2008
Charles Weinstein (Boston, MA United States)
18 out of 33 found this review helpful
The Westons whale away at each other with unrelenting bitchery for three hours and five minutes. During the evening, various dysfunctions are revealed: alcoholism, drug addiction, adultery, pedophilia, even incest. (Surprisingly, no one turns out to be gay, perhaps because the author didn't want to lump homosexuality in with incest, pedophilia, etc.). These revelations are hardly surprising, since the Westons are as screwed-up on the surface as they are underneath.
The play's wished-for ancestors are Long Day's Journey into Night and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but it kept reminding me of humbler fare: Robert Altman's A Wedding (1978), another semi-farcical expose of a family's infinite vices, and The Anniversary (1968), a Bette Davis film in which cackling Bette puts her grown children through a bumpy night. Like both of these vehicles, AOC has an insistently camp tone, and while this serves to keep the sniping tolerable, it also prevents it from going very deep. The dialogue is HBO-sitcom, though none of the laugh lines are actually funny, and the play is studded with would-be aphorisms that are neither funny, clever nor true. In one respect, at least, the author has internalized Albee's vision: all of his men are weak, and most of his women are harpies or cartoons.
The play also works a distinct vein of pretentiousness. An American Indian, symbolic of Those From Whom the Westons Stole the Land, presides over the family's dissolution from an attic perch. Literary name-dropping and quotation--T.S. Eliot, John Berryman, Emily Dickinson--are deployed to make the evening seem important. There is even a risible speech likening the Westons' disharmony to the supposed Decline and Fall of America. (Albee tried something similar in Virginia Woolf, suggesting that George and Martha's squabbling was a phenomenon of Spenglerian proportions).
But while AOC is neither a significant nor a good play, it is not boring either. The camp savagery keeps things humming, and occasionally throws off some genuine sparks--as in the play's best scene, a second-act dinner where the Weston's embittered and cancerous matriarch goads her offspring into physical violence. I often walk out on plays, and AOC's double intermissions gave me two opportunities to do so, but I didn't avail myself of either. And there you have the best thing I can say about this celebrated American drama: it didn't drive me out of the theatre.
 Pretentious Soap Opera February 12, 2008
LyonR (Oregon)
11 out of 32 found this review helpful
This play does not live up to the hype. There is nothing new about the play and it appears critics and audience rave about it because it's familiar. With all the twists, turns and family secrets, Mr. Letts has written a soap opera which would fit right in on TV. His finger prints are found on every page. Things happen because the playwright wants them to happen. In a good play, things grow naturally out of the action I found the characters shallow and uninteresting. The Native American caretaker is little more than a obvious symbol. Hasn't the time of the poor person of color coming to the aid of white folks come and gone? Sorry, but quoting T.S. Elliot exposes a shallow play. Once the New York production closes, the play will be done in some regional theaters and a few non-professional theaters; then it will fade away. August: Osage County (what a pretentious title) is not a modern American classic. Better plays are: Long Day's Journey Into Night, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Death of a Salesmen. They are American classics. As for superior contemporary plays, read: Buried Child, Curse of the Starving Class, Fifth of July, any play by August Wilson, Anna in the Tropics, Two Sisters and a Piano, Angels in America, and Topdog/Underdog, to name just a few. These are the plays that will be read and staged long after AOC is long forgotten.
The Most Exciting Play This Year February 7, 2008
Alex Lawrence (New York, NY USA)
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
August: Osage County is literally the most exciting play of the year. I saw the play in early January, and instantly fell in love with it. Which is an odd thing to say considering the plays heavy subject matter. It deals with everything from drug abuse, molestation, suicide and other topics that just by letting you know what they are would be spoilers.
And while it may seem over loaded with serious subjects, it is a play about a family coming together after the loss of a family member and is filled with so much humor, it's hard to believe that it's a drama. Of course most of the laughter comes out of awkwardness of the situation.
This family has their share of problems and they all rise to the surface when shoved together for the funeral. There are dishes broken, marragies ruined and lots of yelling and cursing. If it sounds a little melodramatic, it is. BUT it's written in such a clear, precise way, it transends simple melodrama and becomes something else all together.
My only reservation is that the play is very long. It is three full acts. (Running time was over 3 and a half hours on Broadway) BUT it is so worth it. It is able to cover so much ground because it's thorough and no plot of subject is dropped.
This is going to be a play that will be around for a while. A true ensemble piece, what we've come to expect from Steppenwolf Theatre. It is a Modern American Classic.
The future Pulitizer Prize winner March 17, 2008
Mary J. Davis
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
This play is without a doubt the best thing on Broadway this season---and it has been a season of brilliant plays. If this doesn't win the Tony and the Pulitzer, there is no jusitce. It reads almost as well as it plays on stage. Get thee to NY and see this gem. If you can't get to NY, then read it NOW!!
|
|
|
|
| |
