Why Not Flash Back??

November 6 is actually quite an active day in my theater-going life!  I was looking at old reviews and saw quite a few that I could've reprinted.  I almost went with the year I saw two shows in one day, but I disliked one of those plays in the extreme, so...why relive that?  I chose instead to flash back to the show I saw in 2007 - that was a momentous year for me, since it was the year I was on a game show and won a trip to Italy!  Actually, this was the last show I saw before the Italian trip, so it's even more meaningful.  Not to mention it's one of my very favorite plays ever...

11/6/07:  Well, for once, all the hype I’ve heard was justified.  August: Osage County was a TERRIFIC night at the theater.  Not only because I was with two gloriously handsome and fabulous men (who got to move over and sit with me when my entire row of Q didn’t show up!), but also because this play was amazing.  The production was amazing.  The actors were amazing.  Everything.  For once, I don’t have to say, ‘oh, it was a good production but the play itself was so-so.’  What a thrill!

In the vein of Williams, Albee or Foote (though certainly not as gently as Foote), Tracy Letts shows us a family, not unlike our own, with all their charms and horribleness.  This is a scary group of people, yet you know and root for every single one of them.  How Letts keeps all of these balls in the air is really wonderful.  Every character has their own story and then their story bleeds into the play at large in a seamless way.  Yay!  The only other show of Letts’ that I have seen is Killer Joe, which I enjoyed a great deal, but it was SO different from this play, it’s almost like a different writer!  Though, I guess the charming bitterness of the characters is evident in both scripts.

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

I’m sure my handsome friends' reviews will be much better than mine in detailing the success of the writing, so I’ll just say that the actors are all so terrific, I can see lots of awards coming their way.  And this play has Pulitzer written all over it [hey, called that one!].  Amy Morton, as one of the daughters, is giving one of those ‘did you see it?’ performances that people will be talking about for a really long time.  But everyone is giving such detailed and natural performances in this rollicking good story that the three and a half hours just fly by.  Honestly.  Even for me, the gal who goes to bed at 10pm most nights.  DVR was invented for sleepy people like me.

The ONE quibble I have is with this new trend (apparently I am tired of most new trends) of having this sound, kind of like the Law and Order ka-DUNGs, happen at blackouts.  I mean, do they really think blackouts aren’t distinctive enough?  These curtain lines aren’t distinctive enough?  They are, actually, and I didn’t need a ka-DUNG to let me know there’s a ending here.  But that is a minor minor complaint.  And I was just talking to another friend who was there last night (if I had known, he could’ve sat in that empty row Q with us!) and he didn’t even notice them.  But I’ve noticed them more lately—they’re in Farnsworth Invention, they were in The Overwhelming and Frost/Nixon and probably others I can’t think of right now.  But there you have it.  I am not a trendsetter.  You’d think I’d like this one, though, since I love Law and Order!

Show-wise, this might be it for me until I get back from Italy—can that be right?  Ack!  Can I go a month without seeing a show?  We’ll see.  Actually, I may try to fit Cymbeline in the next week, if I can pick up a TDF ticket tomorrow/payday.  We'll just have to see.  In the meantime, arrivederci!