When alcoholic patriarch Beverly Weston mysteriously goes missing, the estranged members of the Weston family, ravaged by addiction, illness and deceit reluctantly return home.
With the entire Weston clan confined to their country estate, troubled past relationships, lies and family secrets are spilled under the relentless Oklahoma sun of Osage County, bringing tensions to boiling point.
Letts’s powerful, resonant play comes as a salutary reminder that things are not so straightforward; and that even on the great plains of America, where life was once a simple matter of survival, blood is not always thicker than water, and often – in the end – much less useful.
The play is unremittingly bleak. Even the more sympathetic members of the clan are cruelly denied happiness. Yet the script is so funny, so beautifully constructed and gripping that the play’s running time zips by.
Brutal, hilarious and heart-rending, it's a compelling parable about the American Dream, now curdled.
What follows over almost three and a half hours is a slow burning tragi-comic explosion of collective dysfunction, with all its secrets, lies, failures and flaws exposed.
A scintillating triumph.
Andrew Panton--August: Osage County
Dundee Rep Theatre, Dundee from Wednesday August 30, 2017, until Saturday September 16, 2017. More info: www.dundeereptheatre.co.uk
RSS feed of Theatre reviews