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AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY. By Tracy Letts. Directed by Anna D. Shapiro. Steppenwolf Theatre Company, The Music Box, New York City. 7 June 2008.
August: Osage County received near unanimous praise from critics, the kind of word-of-mouth buzz usually reserved for films and musicals, and positive audience response that was frequent and vocal. It is one of only six plays to win the triple crown of American playwriting: the Pulitzer, the Tony, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. There are at least three reasons for this production's success: it echoed significant American drama, it explored the myth of the American family, and the performances of the ensemble were remarkable.
Many critics noted that August: Osage County was blatantly derivative, pointing to the father's suicide (Death of a Salesman), the drug-addicted mother (Long Day's Journey into Night), cutthroat family politics (Little Foxes), the slash-and-burn arguments of husbands and wives (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), and three sisters who have everything and nothing in common (Crimes of the Heart). In fact, Todd Rosenthal's scenic design of a multi-storied house recalled Jo Mielziner's iconic Death of a Salesman set, as if to say that here was going to be another play about a family tearing itself apart. It was a promise well-kept. What all of these plays have in common with August is that they are about family-the conflicts that occur between husbands and wives, between parents and children, among siblings, and the devastation that only family members can visit on one another. It is all there and more-a rollercoaster ride of...