August: Osage County by Tracy Letts is a Pulitzer and Tony Award winning play. It tells the story of a family whose members are all intelligent, sensitive creatures with the uncanny ability of making each other absolutely miserable. At their home in Goa, the family patriarch suddenly goes missing. Everyone gathers together hoping for good news, but, after five days, his body is found in the water, a presumed suicide. The play takes us through the each family member’s pain, not just over the father’s death, but of having lived in a dysfunctional family. Violet, the drug–addicted, brain–addled matriarch, her three daughters, and their families try unsuccessfully to work out their problems from the time they arrive hoping to find their father, through his funeral, and on into the next day.
Darkly comic, but also violent and sad, August: Osage County explores the painful issues all families have to face, and then some; it’s a statement on the degeneration of the modern family. The play explores the relationships between mothers and daughters, and siblings and spouses in an absolutely riveting, explosive, searing and fiercely funny way.
