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August: Osage County | 
 enlarge | Author: Tracy Letts
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $8.05
You Save: $5.90 (42%)
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Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 2204
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 152
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.4
ISBN: 1559363304
Dewey Decimal Number: 812.6
EAN: 9781559363303
ASIN: 1559363304
Publication Date: February 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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Product Description
Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama "A tremendous achievement in American playwriting: a tragicomic populist portrait of a tough land and a tougher people."-Time Out New York "Tracy Letts' August: Osage County is what O'Neill would be writing in 2007. Letts has recaptured the nobility of American drama's mid-century heyday while still creating something entirely original."-New York magazine One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent Broadway history, August: Osage County is a portrait of the dysfunctional American family at its finest-and absolute worst. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed. The three-act, three-and-a-half-hour mammoth of a play combines epic tragedy with black comedy, dramatizing three generations of unfulfilled dreams and leaving not one of its thirteen characters unscathed. After its sold-out Chicago premiere, the play has electrified audiences in New York since its opening in November 2007. Tracy Letts is the author of Killer Joe, Bug, and Man from Nebraska, which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His plays have been performed throughout the country and internationally. A performer as well as a playwright, Letts is a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where August: Osage County premiered.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Fantastic Play September 7, 2008
I had the opportunity to actually see this play in Chicago. What a fantastic play. Well written, well acted and will be a classic. It has received something like 7 Toni awards on Broadway this year. As one would expect after seeing such a great play. Tracy Letts writes so personally and developes his characters so you feel connected to them immediately. August is one of the finest plays written in this century!!!
 You Will Care About None of These Characters in This Play September 3, 2008
What a disappointing play this was. For all the passion and screaming, other than the father who dies in the first scene, you will not care at all about any of the characters in this play.
Consider what holds you, in the great plays about angst, from O'Neill's to Albee, Clifford Odets, Hellman, Osborne and Ibsen -- even Strindberg and Beckett -- you somehow care about at least one person in the play, or learn something about how they ended up as they did, or learn something from how they attempt to cope with their situation. You get none of that in this pointless screamfest. None of the young victims of the twisted adults are at all edifying. None of the adults have even the slightest enriching qualities of life or language to lift them up as characters or people. It is all just banality. Most simpering of all are the disguised characterizations of what must be the author-as-victim. Remember how you somehow felt renewed at the end of Long Day's Journey or of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? or of Awake and Sing or Hamlet? Well, you won't have that feeling when this thing is over. You will just be glad it IS over.
It is because there are no lessons in this play for anyone.
 Will not stand the test of time... September 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
August: Osage County is too long with periods of really good writing buttressed by really vapid prose filled with *!@)*$ words. Instead of focusing core of the story, the author brings in every plot turn you would expect in a parody of a good play. You knew the moment the boyfriend of the middle daughter walked into the room he would seduce the teenage niece and that another daughter would fall in love with her known cousin and unknown half-brother.
The play would benefit by re-writing for the distant future, remove the excess, trim to the core and concentrate on the relationship of the mother, aunt and oldest daughter, the best part of this play. Deborah from Tulsa and now New Jersey.
Boring Joe July 31, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
"Killer Joe": now there was a play. Lights go down in the theatre. Suddenly a single light shoots across the stage. We see the rear end of a gal bending over as she searches into the refrigerator, its light illuminating her nude body. Bingo. And it goes straight up from there. Wonderful show. Audience loved it. "Osage" opens with a middle aged bugger talking inaudibly to an Indian woman about coming in as a maid. It's a ten minute scene, more or else. Lights out and in the next we learn that he's gone off and may be dead. People gather, drunks walk around on all fours. It's something like an episode of the Coneheads without the cones. I heard a few laughs in the auditorium, but by then everyone had heard that the play was great, so I guess they told their friends it was worth seeing. I didn't. This is another one of these epic plays celebrated for about 14 1/2 minutes and sure to be forgotten. In fact, I defy those who loved it to remember the names of the characters. We don't easily forget Mary Tyrone in "Long Day's Journey Into Night," ditto Big Daddy in "Cat On Hot Tin Roof." The reason is the writing. In "August" there isn't a single character worth remembering. Twenty years hence, it is inconceivable to me that an actress or actor would say that this is the play they'd most like to be in. Actresses keep reviving "The Little Foxes" because it has a great role for a woman of a certain age. This is what keeps plays alive. These epic messes that keep making it to Broadway from the mid-west via Louisville and Chicago have lots of eccentric prairie dog types with goofy names and odd habits such as smoking pot at the supper table, but in the end this sort of late-Sam Shepard play goes nowhere. There is no dramatic action. There is nothing going on but a staged short story.
It's understandable July 30, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I now understand why this play won so many awards. This was one of the best plays I've read in many years. THe characters were well-constructed and written. I hope they have an Equity touring company in the future so I can see the production live.
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