Finished: August: Osage County (Letts). Brilliant Pulitzer and Tony award winning play that I also had the privilege of seeing on Broadway. The book took my breath away just as much as the live play! Oh, it's not pretty. There is so much family drama and tension and bare-bones confrontation that it leaves you anything but happy. However, it certainly makes you feel....and even if your family isn't dysfunctional like this one, there's are little bits of truth here and there in the play that you can take and see in your own family.

August: Osage County, set in Oklahoma in 2007, starts with the family patriarch, Beverly Weston, interviewing a young Native American gal, Johnna, who he wants to hire to be a live in cook and aid to his wife, Violet, who is ill with throat cancer and addicted to all kinds of pain pills. This opening conversation is the only time we get to see Beverly...the next we hear of him he's missing, and he turns up drowned five days later. On the stage he was played to brilliant perfection by John Cullum, a Tony award winning actor who is probably better known to the mainstream public for playing Holling on Northern Exposure. These days, he plays Mike's father on The Middle. Anyway....he was magnificent in his very short role which propels the rest of the play.

So, after Beverly Weston goes missing, his three daughters, Barbara, age 46, Ivy, age 44, and Karen, age 40, all converge on the house, along with Violet's sister, Mattie Fae, her husband Charlie, her son Little Charles, age 37, Barbara's husband, Bill, their daughter, Jean, age 14, and Karen's fiance, Steve, age 50. Barbara and Bill had moved away many years before to Colorado where Bill is a professor at a college. She had dealt with her mother's pill addiction once before and saw her through treatment, but does not live near her parents now. Her mother claims that Barbara is her father's favorite, but in reality, it seems that Barbara is her mother's favorite...however, her mother had such a terrible upbringing that she herself can be so pig-headed and harsh to her daughters that you don't really see any love...just a desperate need to have her daughters in her vicinity. Though Barbara and Bill seem to be there showing a united front, in reality Bill is having an affair with a college student and is going to divorce Barbara. Their daughter Jean is all to aware of these facts and is very much into finding a quiet place to smoke her pot. Ivy still lives in the same town as her mother and has been the one there doing most of the "seeing after". She's constantly berated by her mother as to her looks, her clothes, and how she's ever going to attract a man. It is Ivy who tells her sister Barbara that she (Ivy) was truly her dad's favorite. Karen has lived for years in Florida and has always had an image of what her life would be like...knight on white horse swooping in to propose on one knee, carry her off to a romantic honeymoon and have children. Now that she's 40 and has dated so many losers, she's clinging to her fiance, Steve, like he's God's gift to women.

In reality, Steve is a bit shifty and a wheeler dealer. Nobody really knows what his business is in Florida, but we find out pretty quickly that he likes smoking pot...and he especially likes doing it with Jean. As a matter of fact, he gets way too fresh with Jean and his advances are only stopped by Johnna coming across them in the dark. She hits him on the head with a frying pan! Desperate, Karen packs up and leaves the house with Steve, despite what he just did! Bill also takes his daughter, Jean, back home to Colorado and leaves his soon to be ex-wife to deal with her own mother. Meanwhile, Ivy and Little Charles have fallen in love....even though they're first cousins. They plan to get married and move away to New York. When his mother, Mattie Fae, sees something going on between the two, she confides to Barbara that she needs to stop them because...duh duh duhhhhh....Little Charles is really their brother!! That's right, Mattie Fae had a fling with Beverly years ago. Violet Weston, also brilliantly played, I might add, by Estelle Parsons, blurts the news out to Ivy when she's about to let her mother know that she's going away with Little Charles. She cares nothing about sparing Ivy's feelings...she just wants to keep her there in the same town. Ivy runs from the house, declaring that she'll move to New York anyway.

It seems Violet has known all these years that Little Charles is Beverly's son. And the kicker...it seems that Violet was also aware when Beverly went missing that he was staying at a hotel for a few days before he killed himself. (Yes, they all pretty much figure out that he went out on his little row boat and then drowned himself intentionally.) Anyway, he left Violet a note about where he was going and, I guess, what his intentions were and to call him if she wanted. Well, she didn't call. When Barbara finds this out, she leaves her mother's house for good. Violet is left wandering the house and ends up with only Johnna to comfort her.

It's really a devastating play, but just so brilliant in all the dialogue and the quick familial conversations and all the talking over one another. It's even written that way in the actual play book, with fragmented conversations side by side. I might include a few passages, but it will be hard to know when to stop typing!

Oh, and the language...boy hidey. Here's a snippet from when Barbara and Bill first arrive back at the old house in Oklahoma after being told that Beverly is missing, having driven all the way from Colorado:

Barbara: Goddamn, it's hot.
Bill: Wimp.
Barbara: I know it. Colorado spoiled me.
Bill: That's one of the reasons we got out of here.
Barbara: No it's not....What were these people thinking? 
Bill: What people?
Barbara: The jokers who settled this place. The Germans and the Dutch and the Irish. Who was the asshole who saw this flat hot nothing and planted his flag? I mean, we fucked the Indians for this?
Bill: Well, genocide always seems like such a good idea at the time. 
Barbara: Right, you need a little hindsight.
Bill: Anyway, if you want me to explain the creepy character of the Midwest, you're asking the wrong---
Barbara: Hey. Please. This is not the Midwest. All right? Michigan is the Midwest. God knows why. This is the Plains: a state of mind, right, some spiritual affliction, like the Blues.
Bill: "Are you okay?" "I'm fine. Just got the Plains." (They laugh.)

This one will be long. It's at the dinner the family has after they come back from Beverly's funeral. Violet is hopped up on her pills once again:

Violet: Bev made some good investments if you can believe it, and we had things covered for you girls, but he and I talked it over after some years passed and decided to change things, leave everything to me. We never got around to taking care of it legally, but you should know he meant to leave everything to me. Leave the money to me.
Barbara: Okay.
Violet: Okay (Checks in with Ivy, Karen.) Okay?
Ivy: Okay.
Violet: Karen? Okay? (Uncertain, Karen looks to Steve, then Barbara.)
Barbara: Okay.
Karen: Okay.
Violet: Okay. But now some of this furniture, some of this old shit you can just have. I don't want it, got no use for it. Maybe I should have an auction.
Mattie Fae: Sure, an auction's a fine idea---
Violet: Some things, though, like the silver, that's worth a pretty penny. But if you like I'll sell it to you, cheaper'n I might get in an auction.
Barbara: Or you might never get around to the auction and then we can just have it for free after you die.
Ivy: Barbara... (Pause. Violet coolly studies Barbara.)
Violet: You might at that. 
Little Charles: Excuse me, Bill? I'm wondering, this writing you found, these poems---?
Violet: Where are you living now, Bill? You want this old sideboard?
Bill: I beg your pardon.
Violet: You and Barbara are separated, right? Or you divorced already? (Another silence.)
Bill: We're separated.
Violet: (To Barbara.) Thought you could slip that one by me, didn't you?
Barbara: What is the matter with you?
Violet: Nobody slips anything by me. I know what's what. Your father thought he's slipping one by me, right? No way. I'm sorry you two're having trouble...maybe you can work it out. Bev'n I separated a couple of times, 'course, though we didn't actually call it that---
Barbara: Please, help us to benefit from an illustration of your storybook marriage---
Violet: Truth is, sweetheart, you can't compete with a younger woman, there's no way to compete. One of those unfair things in life. Is there a younger woman involved?
Barbara: You've already said enough on this subject, I think---
Bill: Yes. There's a younger woman.
Violet: Ah...y'see? Odds're against you there, babe.
Ivy: Mom believes women don't grown more attractive with age.
Karen: Oh, I disagree, I---
Violet: I didn't say they "don't grow more attractive," I said they get ugly. And it's not really a matter of opinion, Karen dear. You've only just started to prove it yourself.
Charlie: You're in rare form today, Vi.
Violet: The day calls for it, doesn't it? What form would you have me in?
Charlie? I just don't understand why you're so adversarial.
Violet: I'm just truth-telling. (Cutting her eyes to Barbara.) Some people get antagonized by the truth.
Charlie: Everyone here loves you, dear.
Violet: You think you can shame me, Charlie? Blow it out your ass. 

It just goes on and on. I so recommend reading this play. Honestly, it's nothing like my family, but it just bares like a flesh wound all this dysfunctional family's feelings.

One more snippet. The three sisters are talking alone in the study after the dinner, and after they've wrestled the pills away from their mother, who continued to berate them at dinner, talking about her miserable childhood but how she was from the greatest generation and they couldn't possibly understand her trials. Violet is now upstairs being cared for by Johnna:

Barbara: "Greatest Generation", my ass. Are they really considering all generations? Maybe there are some generations from the Iron Age that could compete. And what makes them so great anyway? Because they were poor and hated Nazis? Who doesn't fucking hate Nazis?! You remember when we checked her in the psych ward, that stunt she pulled?
Ivy: Which time?
Karen: I wasn't there.
Barbara: Big speech, she's getting clean, this sacrifice she's making for her family, and---
Ivy: Right, she's let her family down but now she wants to prove she's a good family member---
Barbara: She smuggled Darvocet into the psych ward...in her vagina. There's your Greatest Generation for you. She made this speech to us while she was clenching a bottle of pills in her cooch, for God's sake.
Karen: God, I've never heard that story.
Ivy: Did you just say "cooch"?
Barbara: The phrase "Mom's pussy" seems a bit gauche.
Ivy: You're a little more comfortable with "cooch", are you?
Barbara: What word should I use to describe out mother's vagina?
Ivy: I don't know but---
Barbara: "Mom's beaver"? "Mother's box"?
Ivy: Oh God---
Karen: Barbara! (Laughter, finally dying out.) I'm sorry about you and Bill.
Ivy: Me, too, Barb.
Barbara: If I had my way, you never would've known.
Karen: Do you think it's a temporary thing, or...?
Barbara: Who knows? We've been married a long time.
Karen: That's one thing about Mom and Dad. You have to tip your cap to anyone who can stay married that long.
Ivy: Karen. He killed himself.

ok...that's all for now. A play definitely worth its accolades!