Belvoir St Theatre, November 14,
8.5/10
The August heat in Oklahoma’s Osage Country kills pet tropical birds. It doesn’t do much for the people, either. They claw at each other like pterodactyls because a soft heart equals vulnerability., when what’s needed to survive in Osage County – in the Weston family, at least – is strength and its coefficient, venom.
That’s how Violet, the matriarch has survived, despite being a pill-popper for decades, despite having mouth cancer, and despite her husband, Beverly, having long given up his career as an acclaimed poet to become what she terms “a world-class alcoholic”.
Tracy Letts’ 2007 play is a truly great work, with Violet one of the juiciest roles of all time. Initially, it seemed Pamela Rabe may not rise to Violet’s challenge, but then the whole first act of Eamon Flack’s production was flat, partially because everyone other than John Howard (Beverly) and Helen Thompson (Violet’s sister, Mattie Fae) was too soft. Sensational lines were being wasted.
Then in Act Two the production suddenly reared up on its hind legs and became frightening in its power, ferocity, heart and humour. By now Beverly has drowned himself: possibly to end his inconsolable disappointment at having written nothing for 50 years; possibly out of guilt over an old affair; possibly due to an insufferable life in a lonely house – their three daughters having flown the coop – with Violet’s tongue to lash him towards more whiskey. Suddenly Rabe is Violet in every cell of her being as, addressing her dead husband, she spits, “You think I’ll weep for you?” Of course she can’t: that would be a crack in the steel.
As everyone assembles for the post-funeral lunch, Rabe’s Violet assumes a power and savage wit that would have made Zeus flinch on his throne, let alone this ragtag assemblage of family. When she sees the gentlemen have stripped down to their shirts, she hisses, “I thought we were having a funeral dinner, not a cockfight,” whereupon they dutifully don their jackets in the appalling heat.
She then demands someone say grace, which falls to her hapless brother-in-law, Charlie (Greg Stone), whose ineptitude makes this among theatre’s most amusingly excruciating speeches. But even as the hilarity builds throughout the scene, so does the malignity, and seated at the table is the one person who’s almost a match for Violet: her oldest daughter, Barbara (Tamsin Carroll).
Carroll, too, rises in Act Two. Hers is a harder character to like than Rabe’s, being lacerated with bitterness because her husband, Bill (Bert LaBonte), has left her for a younger woman. (In Violet’s savagely pragmatic world, that’s just the way things are.) The chemistry between Violet and Barbara is critical to the play’s success, and Rabe and Carroll make this ferment, even as we wince at their ferocity, and what their ferocity hides.
Flack’s production, designed by Bob Cousins, dismantles Letts’ three-storey rural house, instead offering a vision of a home disintegrating as rapidly as its family; as if the vast mid-western plains are reclaiming what was once theirs. Besides Rabe and Carroll, the cast of 12 includes compelling performances from Thompson, Stone, Howard, Anna Samson (the live-wire Karen Weston) and Johnny Nasser (the sheriff). Dialect flaws with the “o” vowels, alas, afflict the whole cast.
The extraordinary play even anticipates future events. “This country,” says Barbara, “this experiment, America, this hubris: what a lament, if no one saw it go. Here today, gone tomorrow. Dissipation is actually much worse than cataclysm.” That we shall see.
Until December 15.