BWW Reviews: AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY Visits York and Ephrata in Two Fine Productions

Osage County, Oklahoma is a real place. With fewer than 50,000 people in the entire county and not just in its county seat, Pawhuska, it is counted into nearby metro Tulsa, though it's far more rural. It's American heartland - the Plains, not the Midwest. It's the sort of place where one can easily imagine that nothing dramatic happens.

Tracy Letts' award-winning AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY would beg to differ with that, because playwright Letts knows that the real drama of life is inside people's homes, not out in public. If you want dysfunction, misery, catastrophe, and disaster, just be part of a mid-sized to large family. You'll have all the drama you want. That's why Letts' portrait of the Weston family is so shocking: it's a painfully close mirror of the ugly realities of family life. Is the language rough? Are the family dynamic disturbing? Here's a hint - if the Westons don't resemble your family, don't poke your nose too far into your neighbors' families. Someone's may. Not closely - it's happy families that "are all alike," but they'll know something about this kind of family tragedy, even if not an exact replica of it.

Beverly Weston is, or more likely was, one of the great poets of America. His wife Violet has a bad back and has taken to pills; he's taken to drink. Two adult daughters live far away and have their own family problems; one has remained in the area, works at a college like her father, and is the one that's wound up being the single person who takes care of the parents now that they're older and now that mama has health problems. Beverly and Violet don't have the marriage of the ages, if in fact they ever did. There's one granddaughter, who self-medicates her own family problems with marijuana now that her parents are breaking up. No one in the family has any time whatsoever for anyone else, though they believe they're all devoted to each other.

Is Beverly Weston a secret urban sophisticate trapped in life on the Great Plains, married to an earth mother gone to seed with her pills? Is he a salt-of-the-earth Plains poet married to a faculty wife gone bad (shades of Martha in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF)? Both readings are fair game, and each one of them is currently on stage in Central Pennsylvania. The first is found at Ephrata Performing Arts Center, directed by Edward R. Fernandez, where the always-amazing Elizabeth Pattey rules the stage as the caftaned earth mother who eats her young. The second is directed by Jim Handakas and stars Charlotte Flynn Michalski in her first turn on the York Little Theatre stage. Though the feeling of both productions is very different, both revolve around their riveting Violets.

Violet Weston is a foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, pill-popping mess, with a collage of medical problems most recently including mouth cancer, which her husband secretly finds far too fitting. It may be small wonder that Beverly Weldon, who appears not to have written a publishable word of poetry since his award-winning period in the 1960's, has gone silent in public, and has now disappeared in private. It is no wonder that all three of her daughters beg not to be her, and are more or less slowly, nonetheless, becoming her. She is a queen who rules by fear, mostly that she will open her mouth and say something. There's much to compare with Martha, of WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, except that Martha's problems stem partly from her infertility, while Violet had to give birth if only to have young to eat.

Daughter Karen, who's moved to Florida and who's engaged to marry a businessman who's discovered to be less than on the level while at Violet's house, is played by Rachel Cyr in York and by Lynne DeMers-Hunt in Ephrata. DeMers-Hunt is more flashy and more needing of a rich businessman to keep her in nail polish, but Cyr delivers Karen's monologues with the sheer bursts of speed needed to make them riotously funny in their delivery. DeMers-Hunt's style and Cyr's speed-racing mouth make them both fine candidates for the part.

Daughter Ivy is the child who's never left home. She's never married, she's expected to fix everything for her parents, and she's hiding relationship secrets a mile wide. Catherine Howard's Ivy in York succeeds in fighting her way to non-descriptness, in being the daughter no one notices. Sharon Mellinger in Ephrata isn't so much non-descript as dumpy, another perfect read on the character. They're both the daughter that Violet and her sister, the girls' aunt, feel free to pick on for her total lack of appeal to other humans. They're willing to tell Ivy that she "looks like" a lesbian, but they find her so dull that neither mother nor aunt give credence to the idea that she would have a lesbian relationship rather than a straight one; Ivy is that charmless.

Barbara is the sister who sees herself as the most responsible - even more so than Ivy, who's local and the family dogsbody; Barbara believes that phone calls, mail, and shipped presents, plus "family conferences" on the phone with Ivy about Beverly and Violet have made her the true carer. She doesn't see that she hasn't been, just as she doesn't see that her marriage is totally wrecked or that her daughter is on drugs. She also can't see that she's turning into her mother. Susan Kresge is Ephrata's Barbara, visibly controlling and grasping, though oblivious; Jen McGurn plays Barbara at York as a velvet glove that suddenly discovers she may have a sledgehammer in hand, though still oblivious.

Whether you want death, divorce, drugs, violence, or the like on your plates, they're all there, as is more. Name your family dysfunction and you'll find it.

Special mention must be made of the Native American domestic helper, Johnna. Played by Emily Kuhns in Ephrata as more of a sweet girl with problems, and in York by Miranda Zerbe as more hired help and less dear, in both cases she's great to watch, and fascinating to see interact with Barbara's daughter Jean, the marijuana fan.

There are men in the play as well, many of them, but this is a women's play. The men are mostly types - the adulterous husband, the slimy businessman, the oblivious uncle, the kid who grew up to be sheriff, the couch potato cousin with depths. Both productions have cast the men well, but the show is the opposite of LES MISERABLES. There, the women are all cardboard types; here the men are, as they are primarily window dressing for the women to enact their life stories and their fights with each other and everyone else. But all play their parts with recognition for what they are, especially John Kleimo at Ephrata as Charlie, who milks out the overlong grace at dinner for every possible audience giggle and family groan before dinner falls to pieces.

It's a long show, but save your greatest attention for Act Two, which features what may be one of the greatest scenes in modern theatre. AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is what Eugene O'Neill would write if he were writing about true-life family dysfunction today, and Act Two features a family dinner that is breathtakingly horrific in its sheer realism. Although O'Neill is the closest comparison, there are also vestiges of Albee, particularly the aforementioned VIRGINIA WOOLF, and shades of Tennessee Williams, as a trace of Southern Gothic creeps in around the O'Neill realism.

They're very different productions, but both worthy and both riveting. Either one is worth catching, or see both and decide which take on the show is closer to your perception of it. You're best off not comparing it with the movie, even if you know the movie; they have some real differences. Take it for what it is, glaring black comedy like so much of our lives are.

At York Little Theatre through March 29, and at Ephrata through April 4. This is one of the defining shows of the past decade, so if you've never seen it, catch it at least once - either production will do, though if you can catch both you'll find it worth the time to see two different takes on a show at the same time. Remember - this is a show with seriously raw language and seriously raw emotions. If you're not prepared for it, this is not your show. If you have young children, it's probably also too long for them. Teens probably hear worse language every day at school, but it's a show that's probably only of interest to theatre geeks - if your child is one of them, go ahead and take them; they'll understand.

For York Little Theatre, call 717-854-5715 or visit www.ylt.org for tickets and information. For Ephrata Performing Arts Center, call 717-733-7966 or visit www.ephrataperformingartscenter.com.