[NEohioPAL] REVIEW: North Canton Playhouse "August: Osage County"

[Tom Wachunas]

Bitter Pill
By Tom Wachunas
      “Our appetite for
schadenfreude is ravenous, and misery’s best company is a hungry voyeur.”
-        June Godwit, from “Post-structuralism: Flacid,
yet absurd?” –  
 
    I realize
that  reviewing the production of
“August: Osage County,” currently on the venerable North Canton Playhouse
mainstage, might seem to be a recanting of my ARTWACH post on February 12,
filled as it was with moralizing about gratuitous profanity and otherwise vapid
content in our entertainment. It’s not. Frankly, if beforehand I had known more
about the sheer preponderance of insouciant gutter-speak that permeates Tracy
Letts’ 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a numbingly dysfunctional Oklahoma
family -  or for that matter the play’s
stifling, dyspeptic aura -  I likely
would not have committed to seeing it. 
    That said, it’s not the dark and tragic
narrative content of this production that makes it so compelling. For that, all
one need do is sample television news magazines or the talk show circuit to
vicariously experience the seamy undersides and consequences of toxic human
relationships. So no, this play is neither particularly original nor revelatory
in its imitation of life, Pulitzer Prize notwithstanding. It is, on the other
hand, eminently memorable for the explosive performances delivered by the
excellent 13-member cast under the direction of Ted Paynter.
    Most impressive is their consistently
sustained, riveting dramatic intensity and focus over a very long stretch. The
evening runs about three hours (with two intermissions), and for all of that,
scenes move along at a reasonably brisk pace. Still, such an indulgence in
lengthy play writing seemed largely unnecessary in this story. The grimy
message was received in half the time.
    The play opens
with Beverly (Bill Brown), the alcoholic poet- patriarch of the Weston family
in the process of hiring Johnna, a gentle-hearted Native American (Shannon
Jamison), to take care of his addict wife ailing from mouth cancer. “My wife
takes pills and I drink,” Brown intones with cavalier glibness, “That’s the
bargain we’ve struck.” The tone is set, and it’s soon clear we’re in for a wild
unraveling of family pathologies that make the case studies from such
luminaries as Eugene O’Neil, Tennessee Williams, or Arthur Miller seem sunny by
comparison. Here, father proceeds to disappear, prompting an emergency extended
family reunion. 
     Reunion? More
like an Oklahoma tornado, flinging about a blistering detritus of resentment
and rage. Damaged goods indeed, this is a family united by some of the ugliest
common denominators of human behavior, including substance addiction,
infidelity, divorce, and incest. Sure, there are deliciously ‘humorous’
interludes, some provided by the vociferous bickering of Mark Adkins as Uncle
Charlie and Stephanie Hester as Aunt Mattie, others by the chatty Kelly A.
Tanner as one of the three Weston daughters, Karen. And there are a few moments
of genuine tenderness. But all these are quickly swallowed up, like so many
mood-altering pharmaceuticals, by the unrelenting cynicism, hubris, and
emotional bloodletting that drives the characters’ interactions. They’re
completely clueless as to finding lasting solutions on this sweltering August
battlefield.
    And speaking of
pharmaceuticals, Donna Rasicci’s portrayal of Weston matriarch, Violet, who
ingests pills like candy, turns in a tour-de-force performance of astonishing
fluidity. Like flipping a switch, she alternates between passages of searingly
honest assessment of herself and family, and her pathetic, howling disconnects
from reality.
     Similarly, Marci Sailing Lesho is utterly startling
and every bit as darkly commanding in her character of eldest daughter,
Barbara. Bitter and exasperated over her failed marriage (among other things),
at one point she tells her all-too- precocious, pot-smoking teenage daughter,
Jean (Andrea Hartman), “Thank God we can’t tell the future. We’d never get out
of bed.”    
    But no prescient
interventions are forthcoming, Divine or otherwise. While this unabashedly bold
descent into domestic degeneracy is assuredly epic, it is also neither heroic
nor hopeful. I emerged bludgeoned, not blessed.
 
    “August: Osage County” on the North Canton
Playhouse mainstage, located in Hoover High School, 525 Seventh Street NE,
North Canton. Performances are Friday, March 2, and Saturday, March 3, at 8:00
pm, and Sunday March 4 at 2:30 pm. Tickets are $13 and can be ordered by
calling (330) 494 – 1613.
 
    For other reviews
and commentaries by Tom Wachunas on the performing and visual arts in the
greater Canton area, please read his blog, ARTWACH, at www.artwach.blogspot.com
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