August: Osage County

“I’d bet the farm that no family has ever been as unhappy in as many ways—and to such sensationally entertaining effect—as the Westons of
August: Osage County
, a fraught, densely plotted saga of an Oklahoma clan in a state of near-apocalyptic meltdown. Fiercely funny and bitingly sad, this turbo-charged tragicomedy—which spans three acts and more than three blissful hours—doesn’t just jump-start the fall theater season,
August
throws it instantaneously into high gear.”

 

“The best new play to emerge from Chicago in at least a generation.”

 

“The new Broadway season’s first must-see offering. This is a play that will leave us laughing and wondering, shuddering and smiling, long after the house lights come back on.”

 

“
August
is Letts’s vision of the American family writ large—geographically scattered yet incestuously close, and destined to move through the world all alone.”

 

“In Tracy Letts’s ferociously entertaining play, the American dysfunctional family drama comes roaring into the twenty-first century with eyes blazing, nostrils flaring and fangs bared, laced with corrosive humor so darkly delicious and ghastly that you’re squirming in your seat even as you’re doubled-over laughing. A massive meditation on the cruel realities that often belie standard expectations of conjugal and family accord—not to mention on the decline of American integrity itself.”

 

“
August
will cement Letts’s place in theatrical history. He has written a Great American Play. How many of those will we get the chance to discover in our lifetime?”

 

“Packed with unforgettable characters and dozens of quotable lines,
August: Osage County
is a tensely satisfying comedy, interspersed with remarkable evocations on the cruelties and (occasional) kindnesses of family life. It is as harrowing a new work as Broadway has offered in years and the funniest in even longer.”

 

“I don’t care if
August: Osage County
is three-and-a-half hours long. I wanted more.”

 

“Enormously entertaining . . . a good scabrous play.”

 

“Tracy Letts, in his Broadway debut, creates a hugely ambitious, highly combustible saga that will leave you reeling.
August: Osage County
may make you think twice about going home for the holidays, but for Broadway theatergoers, it’s a great big exhilarating gift.”

The child comes home and the parent puts the hooks in him. The old man, or the woman, as the case may be, hasn’t got anything to say to the child. All he wants is to have that child sit in a chair for a couple of hours and then go off to bed under the same roof. It’s not love. I am not saying that there is not such a thing as love. I am merely pointing to something which is different from love but which sometimes goes by the name of love. It may well be that without this thing which I am talking about there would not be any love. But this thing in itself is not love. It is just something in the blood. It is a kind of blood greed, and it is the fate of a man. It is the thing which man has which distinguishes him from the happy brute creation. When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a hame trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can’t get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can. And the good old family reunion, with picnic dinner under the maples, is very much like diving into the octopus tank at the aquarium.