Saying goodbye to Superior Donuts

I wish I could be in New York this afternoon for the final performance of Tracy Letts' Superior Donuts. The play, which opened Oct. 1 at Broadway's Music Box Theatre, is closing after 108 performances. It's one of my favorites and it deserved a longer run.

Theatergoing is a communal experience but whether or not a play grabs you is such a personal thing. When I think about all of the plays I've seen over the past three years what it comes down to is this: Don't lecture, tell me a story. And if you can surprise me, that's a plus.

Superior Donuts, the story of a rundown donut shop in a changing Chicago neighborhood, did both of those things for me. I laughed, I got choked up and there was a moment when I truly gasped. Most of all, I was entertained.

I thought Michael McKean as the worn-out shop owner and Jon Michael Hill as the eager young man who comes to work for him had terrific chemistry. They were so much fun to watch together and Hill especially was amazing in his Broadway debut.

Last year, some of the performances I enjoyed on Broadway in November were overlooked by the Tony nominators. So I hope they remember McKean and Hill when spring rolls around. (And James Schuette's set design also deserves a nomination. It was so detailed, down to the gum stuck underneath the tables.)

The cast is made up of mainly Chicago-based actors, all of whom transferred with the play from its premiere at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. In addition to McKean and Hill, they are Jane Alderman, Kate Buddeke, Cliff Chamberlain, Michael Garvey, Robert Maffia, James Vincent Meredith and Yasen Peyankov. I hope I get to see them on stage again.

It's a shame that there isn't room on Broadway for a play like Superior Donuts, a slice of life that's well-acted, with witty dialogue, memorable characters and a story that draws you in. This was a play of sweet, small moments, poignancy and humor from a terrific ensemble.

It's so different from Letts' previous work, the Tony and Pulitzer-winning August: Osage County, an acerbic, multigenerational family story. I love them both and I love the fact that they're so different.

(Although they share Letts' memorable characters and sharp dialogue and like August: Osage County, I think Superior Donuts would make a great movie. Spike Lee would be the perfect director for this gritty urban story.)

In an interview with the American Theatre Wing's Downstage Center program, Letts noted that Superior Donuts was his first play set in his adopted hometown of Chicago. While he didn't start out to write a work that would be smaller in scope, he does like to stretch himself.

"I have an impulse to mix it up. When I finish one thing, the next thing I work on I want to be different. I want to challenge myself in different ways. I want to explore different things, whether it's writing or acting."

I'm so glad Letts did challenge himself and I'm looking forward to his next play.

Superior Donuts needs a boost

I'm worried about Superior Donuts.

Yes, I know tickets are on sale through March but last week it played to 49 percent capacity at the 991-seat Music Box Theatre, the lowest of any Broadway show. And it's down 12 percent from the previous week. The average ticket price was $66.35.

Needless to say those numbers don't inspire confidence, which is a shame.

Of the six shows I saw on my last trip to New York, this play about a rundown little donut shop in a changing Chicago neighborhood is the one that moved me the most. Superior Donuts has heart and humor and it deserves a much bigger audience. (Discounted tickets are available at Playbill and Broadway Box.)

I hope the poster isn't tripping people up. One woman I talked to said she wasn't sure at first whether it was a play or an advertisement for an actual donut shop! Also, I've never been able to get the video on the show's Web site to play properly. But maybe that's just my computer.

Anyway, I thought that Michael McKean as shop owner Arthur Przybyszewski and Jon Michael Hill as Franco Wicks, the young man who comes to work for him, had better chemistry than any other pair I saw on stage. That includes Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig in A Steady Rain.

I had a brief conversation with McKean as he walked up 45th Street after the show, and one thing he mentioned was how playwright Tracy Letts creates such memorable characters. I definitely agree.

(When I saw This is Spinal Tap at a movie theater in Hartford, Connecticut in 1984, I never imagined that 25 years later I'd be walking up 45th Street in New York City with McKean after seeing him on Broadway!)

The New York Times has story today about Hill, the 24-year-old who's simply amazing in his Broadway debut. He and director Tina Landau both talk about how hard they worked to strike a balance with his character so that Franco wouldn't come across as too jokey.

“Arthur is a man who has given up on hope," Landau said, "while Franco is built around the idea of a better America yet to come. For me it was key to get those two almost primordial forces opposing each other.”

Coincidentally, last night someone left a comment on my review of Superior Donuts and it pretty much sums up how I feel, too:

"After seeing August: Osage County last season and Superior Donuts yesterday afternoon, I'm telling everybody that it was our favorite this trip. The Absolute-Must-See Play. No gimmicks or tricks. Just amazing writing and acting that truly exhausted us. This is what theater is supposed to be. An experience you can't get at the movies, etc. We would love to see it again as well."

Update: Sadly, Superior Donuts will close on Jan. 3. But you've still got another month to see it.

An Israeli August: Osage County

Wow, August: Osage County really is spanning the globe. I've read about the productions in London and Australia and Portugal. But somehow I missed this one. In January, there was a production in Tel Aviv, at Habima, Israel's national theatre.

I think Tracy Letts' Tony and Pulitzer-winning play would translate well into Hebrew, or any other language. After all, it's about the interaction between parents and children, husband and wives, siblings. Those are pretty universal themes.

(Except there's no letter "w" in Hebrew, so the "Weston" family of the play would probably sound more like "Veston.")

Gila Almagor, one of Israel's leading actresses, played the acid-tongued, pill-popping, cancer-stricken matriarch Violet Weston. You might remember Almagor from the Steven Spielberg movie Munich, in which she played the mother of Mossad agent Eric Bana.

In this interview, Almagor talks about how her mother's struggle with mental illness informed her portrayal of Violet.

And this is a tv commercial for the play. My Hebrew's extremely rusty but it starts out by describing the plot.

My must-see fall shows, Broadway edition

Maybe it's the Obama Effect or just a coincidence but there are five shows opening on Broadway this fall that deal with the subject of race in America - musicals Ragtime, Memphis and Finian's Rainbow and plays Superior Donuts and Race.

Three of them - a revival of Ragtime and two new plays, Tracy Letts' Superior Donuts and David Mamet's Race - are among the shows I'm most looking forward to seeing as the 2009-2010 Broadway season gets under way.

Why those three? Well, I've always been interested in 20th century American history, not so much from the perspective of momentous events but from a social and cultural angle - where we come from and how we get along.

Ragtime, based on E.L. Doctorow's novel, with a score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, focuses on three families - African-American, Jewish immigrant and WASP - at the turn of the century. I loved the book and from listening to the music, I think it does a wonderful job of telling those intertwined stories.

Superior Donuts, fresh from the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, is a contemporary look at a diverse, changing Chicago neighborhood. After seeing so many terrific Chicago actors in August: Osage County, I'm eager for more, including Jon Michael Hill, who's making his Broadway debut. He's won raves for his performance as a teenager who works in a doughnut shop owned by Michael McKean. (From Spinal Tap! Laverne & Shirley!)

And Race - well, no doubt Mamet will have something interesting and incendiary to say. Plus, of all the big-name movie and tv actors who'll be treading the boards this fall, it has the one I'm most excited about - Richard Thomas. Yes, I realize James Spader is in it, and David Alan Grier and Kerry Washington. But c'mon, The Waltons! I grew up pre-VCR, pre-cable. Network tv was all I had. 'Nuff said.

I'm also pretty pumped about seeing A Steady Rain. Yes, I want to see how Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig will transform themselves into Chicago cops in Keith Huff's two-hander play. But no doubt about it, I'm also looking forward to staring dreamily at Hugh Jackman for 90 uninterrupted minutes. (Although the Playbill, which features their melded faces, is creepy beyond words.)

And I simply cannot miss the revivals of two Neil Simon plays, Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound. I'm really looking foward to seeing what Chicagoan David Cromer, who directed the amazing Our Town, will do with them.

The plays are thinly veiled accounts of Simon's youth growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s and '40s. Which means, I know, creaky, self-deprecating Jewish humor. What can I say? Lines like this truly make me laugh:

"I hate my name - Eugene Morris Jerome. How am I ever gonna to play for the Yankees with a name like that? All the best Yankees are Italian. My mother makes spaghetti with ketchup. What chance to I have?"

And this:

"And when they saw the Statue of Liberty they started to cry. The women wailing and the men shaking and everyone praying. And you want to know why, because they took one look at that statue and said, 'That's not a Jewish woman, we're gonna have problems again.' ''

Oy, I can't wait!

Julie White, jazz hands and Donuts crumbs

Even though it's 90 degrees outside, it's fall preview inside the pages of New York magazine. I've read over all the theatre previews and these are my favorite parts:

The illustrated Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig Show is clever and definitely makes me even more excited to see them as Chicago police officers in A Steady Rain.

Will Daniel Craig loosen up and shed his James Bond persona? Will Hugh Jackman be able to keep his jazz hands in check? I can't wait to find out. Previews begin Sept. 10 at the Schoenfeld Theatre

However, New York magazine, I was a little disappointed in your Q&A with playwright Tracy Letts. I love August: Osage County, too. But it would have been nice to have a couple of questions about Letts' newest transfer from Steppenwolf to Broadway, Superior Donuts, which begins previews at the Music Box Sept. 16.

The play, about the white owner of a decrepit Chicago doughnut shop (Michael McKean) and the black teenage employee who wants to change it for the better (Jon Michael Hill), is one of the shows I'm most excited about seeing this fall. But all I got were a few Donuts crumbs and more about Letts' previous work.

This is as much as we get:

NYMAG: Superior Donuts sounds a lot less personal than August.
Letts: "It was supposed to be an exercise. I thought, I wonder if I can write about people that don’t have any relation to me. But I can’t! I was writing about myself."

Finally, my first taste of how funny Julie White can be came in her Tony acceptance speech for The Little Dog Laughed.

And White is pretty amusing as as well in this interview about her off-Broadway role in The Understudy, which begins previews Oct. 9 at the Laura Pels Theatre. She makes me want to see a play I was on the fence about:

"It’s deep. Death is all over that play. But you know, I’m in it, it’s a Theresa Rebeck show, it’s gonna be funny. We did a reading of it at the Roundabout, and it just went over like a thousand bastards."

I'm assuming that's a good thing, although I can't be sure. I Googled "went over like a thousand bastards" and apparently Julie White is the first person in human history to ever utter it.

Goodbye to August on Broadway

As a tribute to this afternoon's final Broadway performance of August: Osage County, I wanted to list my favorite lines from Tracy Letts' play. Unfortunately, I can't find my copy. Someday I'd like to have enough bookshelves to display all of my books - but that day won't be today.

Instead, here's a Steppenwolf Theatre Company video with cast members Jeff Perry, Francis Guinan, Amy Morton and Mariann Mayberry, who talk about bringing a new play from Chicago to New York without any "movie stars."



You can find more videos on the Steppenwolf site, including all the Tony acceptance speeches from Letts, Deanna Dunagan, Rondi Reed, set designer Todd Rosenthal and director Anna D. Shapiro.

Also, the American Theatre Wing's Working in the Theatre program has a great hourlong video featuring a panel discussion with Morton, Perry and Reed.

And if you didn't get a chance to see the play on Broadway or in Chicago, you can catch up with it on tour. There'll be a different cast but the same memorable characters and witty, insightful dialog.

Finally, I can't say goodbye to August on Broadway without sharing Rondi Reed's Tony acceptance speech. I've talked with her twice and Reed, currently playing Madame Morrible in Wicked, is a genuinely warm and friendly person. Definitely a Gratuitous Violins favorite.

One of my favorite scenes happens early on, when her character, Mattie Fae Aiken, is sitting on the couch with Guinan, who plays her husband, Charlie. I was laughing hysterically. Like the great actors they are, they made their banter look so natural, so real.

When I met Reed at the stage door afterward, I mentioned that scene and she told me how much it helped that she and Guinan had known each other and worked together for years.

Women and playwrighting

So, I know I'm a bit late with this but I wanted to say something about the study by a Princeton University student on why female playwrights find it so difficult to get their work produced.

The study's author, Emily Glassberg Sands, found some validity to the argument that there simply are more male playwrights and they tend to be more prolific. She also says that female artistic directors and literary managers tend to be harder on female playwrights, which I guess feeds into the stereotype that we're always tougher on "our own."

Sands examined the 329 plays and musicals produced on Broadway over the past 10 years. She found that shows written by women have sold more tickets and tend to be more profitable overall. But they weren't kept running any longer than less-profitable plays written by men.

Here's an article from Salon discussing the report. One of the comments makes an interesting point that playwrights have to sell themselves and culturally, women have been discouraged from pushing themselves agressively. Blogger Monica Reida, at Fragments, offers some thoughts as a reader and writer of plays.

Over the past 2 1/2 years of theatergoing I've seen about 40 plays, only a handful of which have been written by women.

Three of those I saw at Trinity Repertory Company: Kathleen Tolan's Memory House, Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House and Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. (During that time, Trinity Rep has produced other plays by women that I didn't see.) In New York, I've seen Liz Flahive's From Up Here off-Broadway and Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage on Broadway.

(And one of my favorite musicals, Wicked, was written by a woman, Winnie Holzman, who also wrote the short-lived tv series My So-Called Life. Yeah, I know Wicked is based on a novel by Gregory Maguire. But there's way more Holzman than Maguire.)

I think part of the issue is that so few new plays of any kind get produced. Regional theatre companies tend to rely on the classics, on plays that have been theatre staples for the past hundred years or so, and we're talking about works written almost exclusively by men.

Since historically women have been the primary caregivers, we may simply have focused our literary ambitions elsewhere - toward novels, memoirs, poetry, short stories, which are far less of a collaborative enterprise.

Of course I'd like to see more plays by women, just as I'd like to see more plays by writers who have diverse backgrounds and life experiences, who deal with diverse subjects. I mean, I wouldn't want to see 80 plays about people exactly like me. That would get pretty tiresome.

And we should definitely do everything we can to encourage writers - male and female - to write for the theatre. I was glad to read earlier this year about Fidelity's FutureStage program, which gives students in New York City an introduction to acting, playwrighting and directing.

But I have to tell you, the one play that illuminates the lives of women like no other work I've seen was written by a man - Tracy Letts' August: Osage County, which ends its Broadway run tomorrow.

August: Osage County closing in June

Sadly, Tracy Letts' Tony and Pulitzer-winning play August: Osage County is closing June 28, after a total of 18 previews and 648 regular performances on Broadway.

I guess I shouldn't be too disappointed.

At a time when most Broadway plays have limited runs, August: Osage County, which began life at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, beat the odds. It was an original, contemporary American drama with an open-ended run. It will have played 18 previews and 648 regular performances since October 2007, first at the Imperial and then at the Music Box.

I still remember how excited I was about this play after reading Steve On Broadway's review of the Steppenwolf production, in August 2007, fittingly enough.

Luckily, one of my trips to Broadway coincided with the beginning of previews for August: Osage County. It was one of my most memorable theatre experiences. I'm so grateful I was able to see the play with its original cast, including the playwright's father, Dennis Letts, several months before he passed away.

What a wonderful ensemble, with witty, insightful dialog and characters and story that resonate. The 3 1/2 hours went by so quickly. I especially appreciate the way Tracy Letts illuminates the lives of women who find themselves pushed and pulled between the competing roles of wife, mother, daughter.

The national tour of August: Osage County kicks off in Denver in July, and if it comes near you, definitely go see it. I'm happy that it's coming to Boston's Colonial Theatre from May 4-16, 2010.

Estelle Parsons, who took over from Tony-winner Deanna Dunagan on Broadway, will play family matriarch Violet Weston. Although I never saw Parsons in the role, the Oscar-winner for Bonnie and Clyde is supposed to be terrific.

It's pretty amazing to think that come July, there won't be any American plays on Broadway. When Mary Stuart ends its limited run on Aug. 16, the only play on Broadway will be a very funny British import, The 39 Steps, until Sept. 15, when a revival of The Royal Family opens at the Friedman Theatre.

It's not that there aren't any great American plays in New York. I'm excited about seeing David Cromer's acclaimed production of Our Town, another transfer from the Windy City, at the Barrow Street Theatre in Greenwich Village next month.

(One of the things that August: Osage County made me realize is that in addition to being hog butcher to the world, Chicago has a lot of great theatre and wonderful actors.)

And if you want to see a contemporary American drama on Broadway, well you'll have to wait until sometime in September, when Letts' Superior Donuts, another play that originated at Steppenwolf, begins previews. It's definitely on my list.

The family that writes together

During my trip to Borders today I picked up a copy of Billie Letts' latest novel, Made in the U.S.A., which just came out in paperback.

(I said on Twitter that 90 percent of the cds and dvds are gone. I think it's more like 99 percent. Fewer reasons to keep my Borders Visa. I hope they can hold on because I don't like buying online. I enjoy leaving my apartment and browsing in an actual bricks-and-morter store. Sigh.)

Anyway, this is the book that Letts dedicated to her late husband, Dennis Letts, whom she called "my Broadway star." Dennis Letts played the role of family patriarch Beverly Weston on Broadway in son Tracy's Pulitzer and Tony-winning August: Osage County until shortly before he passed away, in February 2008.

Made in the U.S.A. tells the story of 15-year-old girl and her 11-year-old brother in Spearfish, South Dakota, who embark on a journey in search of their father after their guardian falls dead in a Wal-Mart. (Oddly, a Wal-Mart also plays a role in one of Letts' previous novels, Where the Heart Is. Hmmm.)

The paperback edition has an interview with the author and Letts is asked whether there are parallels between her novels and her son's plays. Here's what she had to say:

"Yes, in that we tend to write about nontraditional families. In his first two plays I would tease and tell him that the characters in his work ended up naked or dead. (Not too much of a stretch, really.) But in his last three plays, he's strayed away from violence and carnage. Now it seems I've begun working in a darker vein than he is."

Letts in London

There's a good interview with playwright Tracy Letts at the online magazine MusicOMH, conducted by freelance journalist Natasha Tripney, who also blogs at Interval Drinks. You can read her review here.

Letts talks about bringing August: Osage County to the National Theatre in London for an eight-week run. He says that the Tony and Pulitzer-winning drama, which arrived with most of its Broadway cast intact, is "playing differently" in Britain, and one reason is the U.S. election.

“The world views America with a little more hope and optimism than it has in recent years and I think that changes the reading of the play. It might make it a bit of a period piece but it also makes the play serve as a kind of warning which I still think is very valuable."

Letts also talks about what it was like to have his father, Dennis Letts, appear in the play on Broadway, despite having been recently diagnosed with cancer. (He passed away in February.)

"It was strange, having him in my work place, but delightful, I’m glad we had that time together. He was fascinated by the process, to be around stage actors of this magnitude, of this skill level. Even though he’s only in the first fifteen minutes of the play he came to every rehearsal and watched everything. It was a great experience for him to have at the end of his life, I’m glad he got that chance to do it."

And Letts says that his new play, Superior Donuts, which had a run over the summer at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, will be coming to New York next year. As a big fan of August: Osage County, I was already hoping to see his next play. And an enthusiastic review from Steve on Broadway sealed the deal. This is on my must-see list for 2009.

There's much more to the interview, so check it out!

One for the ages

Here are the ages of the characters in August: Osage County. The story takes place in August, 2007. I'm surprised that Violet is only supposed to be 65. Given Barbara's references to the Greatest Generation, I imagined her mother being a little older, growing up in the 1930s and 1940s, not the 1940s and 1950s. But apparently, 65 is the age that playwright Tracy Letts had in mind.

Beverly Weston, 69
Violet Weston, Bev's wife, 65

Barbara Fordham, Bev and Violet's daughter, 46
Bill Fordham, her husband, 49
Jean Fordham, their daughter, 14

Ivy Weston, Bev and Violet's daughter, 44

Karen Weston, Bev and Violet's daughter, 40

Mattie Fae Aiken, Violet's sister, 57
Charlie Aiken, her husband, 60
Little Charles Aiken, their son, 37

Johnna Montevata, housekeeper, 26
Steve Heidbrecht, Karen's fiance, 50
Sherrif Deon Gilbeau, 47

Reading August: Osage County

I read today that Estelle Parsons will be taking over Deanna Dunagan's role as family matriarch Violet Weston in August: Osage County on June 17. Lots of cast members will be leaving this month - Molly Regan succeeds Rondi Reed as Mattie Fae Aiken, Robert Foxworth takes over the role of Charlie Aiken from Francis Guinan, Jim True-Frost replaces Ian Barford as Little Charles and Frank Wood will play Jeff Perry's role of Bill Fordham.

(Regan and True-Frost will come from the ranks of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. After giving us the wonderful original cast of August: Osage County all I could think of was, does that place have an apparently endless supply of incredible acting talent or what! Hopefully every member of Steppenwolf will have a chance to rotate into this play during what I hope will be a long Broadway run.)

I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to see the play again, but I'd be especially interested in watching another actress tackle the role of Violet. At 81, Academy Award winner Parsons is actually older than what playwright Tracy Letts had in mind. He specifies that Violet is 65, and Dunagan is 68. I've always thought of Violet as someone who grew up during the Great Depression, and Parsons, who was born in 1927, would certainly have a stronger link to that period.

Coincidentally, I read August: Osage County today after having it in my to-read pile for a couple of months. Mostly, it reinforced how I felt when I saw it performed on Broadway last fall: Letts has done an amazing job exploring family relationships, the pressures on women's lives, the divide between baby boomer children and their Greatest Generation parents. There's lots of witty, biting dialog that makes for a quick read, and makes the 3 1/2-hour play go by very quickly on stage. I felt so much sympathy for the Weston daughters, who are facing their own anxieties about growing older.

Normally when I'm reading a novel, I'm creating my own picture of what the characters are like. This time, I couldn't help but think of the actors I saw portraying those characters on stage. Some were pretty similar to the way I would have pictured them even if I'd never seen the play. But where Dunagan summoned Violet from, I can't even imagine. She brought those words to life in a way beyond anything I could have pictured. Her performance was truly remarkable.

August: Osage County is sometimes compared with Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night. I think they do have a lot in common. Both are semi-autobiographical. Although in O'Neill's case, it's a lot more than semi. Both feature a dysfunctional family, including a mother battling addiction. Although Letts' short, snappy dialog seems more modern, more late 20th century.

Both James Tyrone and Violet Weston grew up poor, and there's an intense, visceral fear of being poor again, a fear that their children clearly don't understand, simply dismissing it out of hand. But that fear drives Violet's actions in a very clear way. There's a great scene where she talks about the poverty and deprivation in which she and her husband grew up and pointedly tells her daughters, "You worked as hard as us, you'd all be president."

Violet and Mattie Fae are sisters who never seem to cut their children any slack. Reading the play, I was reminded again how absolutely vicious they are toward their children. They're constantly taunting them. Mattie Fae's son, Little Charles, can't do anything right. Violet does everything she can to make her daughters feel guilty. Yet her criticisms of them - what they wear, how they live their lives, just repel them and drive them further away.

If there's one complaint I have about August: Osage County it's that the male characters get a little shortchanged in terms of character development. I do wish Letts had spent more time with Charlie Aiken. Reading the play reminded me how thrilling and heroic Charlie is when he stands up to his wife and admonishes her for the way she constantly berates their son.

The printed version of August: Osage County has an epigraph, a quote from Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men that talks about how parents are constantly trying to reclaim their adult children. You can certainly see it in the relationship between Violet Weston and her three daughters, in Violet's fear at being left alone. And her daughters are afraid of being the one left to care for their mother.

When we're were born, Warren wrote, our parents lost something of themselves, and they are going to try and get it back. They are desperate to have their child sit in a chair for a couple of hours, then go to bed under the same roof. "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." Hmmm, I wonder if Violet is the octopus?

A prize winner

Major congratulations to Chicago's Tracy Letts, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for August: Osage County. It's pretty exciting to think that I saw the play that won the Pulitzer, on Broadway, with its original cast. I feel particularly privileged to have seen it with the late Dennis Letts, the playwright's father, in the role of family patriarch Beverly Weston.

August: Osage County is simply one of the funniest, saddest, most wrenching, and most thrilling evenings I've had at the theatre. You may not recognize everyone in this dysfunctional family drama, but if you've ever been part of a family, you'll recognize someone.

Letts is a very witty writer who draws such vivid, complex characters and has some very pointed, biting observations about family relationships. I'm especially impressed with the way he examines the pressures that many women face, sandwiched between caring for their elderly parents and their children and themselves. And August has an amazing cast from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where Letts is an ensemble member, to bring his words to life.

I know this must be a bittersweet moment for Letts, his joy at winning the award tempered by sadness that his father, who died in February of lung cancer, isn't here to share it with him. The play is dedicated to his father. (He's also the son of writer Billie Letts, author of the bestelling 1995 novel Where the Heart Is, a sweet, wonderful book that's about as far in tone from August: Osage County as you can get.)

But apparently Dennis Letts, a former English professor turned actor, knew his son had written a prize-winning work. Tracy Letts told the Chicago Tribune today, "My dad was much more sure of this than me. He was telling me some months ago that this was a shoo-in. But I didn't believe him."

Here's what Joy Meads has to say about the honor on the Steppenwolf blog: "Many theaters might have balked at August’s ensemble of thirteen, and many audiences may have shied away from an unknown new play clocking in at three plus hours. Together, in the belief that innovation requires a little audacity, we took a chance and embraced this play."

Letts, in an interview with Associated Press theatre critic Michael Kuchwara, agrees that Steppenwolf is one of the very few places he could have gone with a play on the scale of August: Osage County. "We always look for opportunities to get members of our ensemble (which numbers more than two dozen) engaged in any given play. We are actor-driven."

Some elements of the play are loosely autobiographical, and Letts says that the idea for the drama had been rolling around in his head for years. "The stars aligned in the right way with the right actors and at the right time."

So, congratulations to Tracy Letts and everyone else at Steppenwolf. And a special hat tip to Steve on Broadway, who was an early and eloquent champion of the play after seeing it in Chicago - in August coincidentally! Steve, your review definitely convinced me to spend a few hours with the Weston clan in Osage County, Oklahoma, and I'm so glad I did.

Breaking the rules

For the past couple of weeks The New York Times' Reading Room, described as "Conversations about Great Books," has been tackling Tracy Letts' August: Osage County. As a neophyte theater critic, and as someone who absolutely loved the play, it's been interesting to follow the discussion. I've gained some new and deeper insights into what I saw on stage in November at Broadway's Imperial Theatre.

The panel includes Times op-ed columnist Frank Rich, the paper's chief theater critic from 1980 to 1994; playwright Marsha Norman, author of night, Mother and the books for the musicals The Secret Garden and The Color Purple; and novelist Eliza Minot, author of The Brambles and The Tiny One.

Last week, Norman wrote that August: Osage County is a play whose structure only seems traditional, but when you look at it more closely, it breaks the rules of playwriting. And it works despite, or maybe because, it breaks them. Here are Norman's rules:

Rule #1: No passive central character. "The general idea of this rule is that the main character - and there can be only one - has to want something, and the play ends when the main character gets it or not." Norman says that in August: Osage County, the main character isn't exactly clear. She guesses that it's Violet Weston, the acid-tongued, pill-popping matriarch. Although she says you could make a case that it's her daughter Barbara. But what Violet wants, other than to make her family miserable, isn't very clear.

Rule #2: "On or about page 8, tell the audience why they are here and what is at stake, or to put it more simply, when they can go home." Norman says the audience doesn't really know what the action in August: Osage County is building toward, there are so many twists and turns. We're kind of kept off balance, and that's a good thing. At first, we think the play is going to be about the search for Beverly Weston, the family patriarch who disappears after the first 10 minutes. But it's not. "I think Tracy Letts didn't want you to know what was coming," Norman writes, "any more than any of us do when we go home for the holidays."

Rule #3: "The main character can't be clinically insane." Norman argues that plays with insane central characters kind of cheat the audience because we can't really see ourselves in the person or identify with his or her predicament. "Plays with insane central characters make us feel useless, and we don't like that." It's hard to sympathize with someone who treats everyone around her so horribly. But I guess I still felt some sympathy toward Violet. And even with her insanity at the center, Norman concludes that August: Osage County still works magnificently. "It's not about the tyrant," she writes. "It's about life with the tyrant."

The whole discussion is well worth reading. For me, it points to the reason why I loved the play so much. There's so much to talk about.

Dennis Letts

I was so shocked and so saddened when I found out this morning that Dennis Letts died on Friday from cancer at age 73. Steve on Broadway has written a thoughtful, moving appreciation of Letts, pictured above at right with his son Tracy.

It's a bit of a strange feeling to think that someone I saw on stage at Broadway's Imperial Theatre just a few months ago has passed away.

Letts portrayed family patriarch Beverly Weston in Tracy Letts' play August: Osage County, and he only had one scene. But it's the first scene, and it sets the tone for the entire evening. I can still picture him sitting in a swivel chair, interviewing a young woman who will be taking care of his cancer-stricken wife. While Letts' time on stage wasn't long, he was a deeply felt presence throughout this amazing 2 1/2-hour drama.

In hindsight, what was even more amazing about Letts' performance is that he was diagnosed with cancer in September, but chose to go with the rest of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company when August: Osage County made the move from Chicago to Broadway. I had no idea that the powerful actor I was seeing on stage was so ill. There was nothing in his portrayal that gave me a clue.

My thoughts are with Letts' wife and sons, and with his family in the wonderful Steppenwolf troupe. I will always feel tremendous admiration for his decision to keep working, and so privileged that I had a chance to see him on stage.

In a statement reported in the Chicago Tribune Tracy Letts said, "his choice to persevere with the New York production in the face of his devastating diagnosis is a testament to his love for the project and the people involved. “Dad had a full and fascinating life, and 'August Osage County' was the cherry on top.”

Dennis Letts' love for the project - and pride in his family - was always apparent.

In an article on Broadway.com, he wrote about the secrets of his success in life: his marriage to novelist Billie Letts, his three sons, "all good men, all funny, all so bright they make your hair hurt." Letts, who turned to acting after a career as an English professor in his native Oklahoma, said, "I'd already had a great run as an actor. Then came Steppenwolf and August: Osage County and an entirely new magical experience."

In November, he told a reporter for the Tulsa World: "Hey, you're talking to a fellow who's gone from Tishimingo Community Theater to Broadway. That's quite a step. And I'm in a great play my son has written. I'm the luckiest man alive."

When August: Osage County came out in paperback a few weeks ago, I bought a copy. Before I started to write this post, I picked it up to read Dennis Letts' part, but I got a little choked up at the dedication. It says simply: For Dad.

The Osage County-Seinfeld connection

Who knew? There two Seinfeld connections to August: Osage County.

Kimberly Guerrero plays Native American housekeeper Johnna in the Steppenwolf Theatre Company production that's become a hit on Broadway. Osage County playwright Tracy Letts, pictured above, an ensemble member since 2002, also acts. Both Letts and Guerrero appeared in separate - and classic - Seinfeld episodes. One of my favorite television series and one of my favorite plays are joined together for posterity.

I found out about the first connection when I saw the play on Broadway in November. In her Playbill profile, Guerrero mentions her role in The Cigar Store Indian, an episode from Season 5 that originally aired on Dec. 9, 1993. (Guerrero told me at the stage door that she included it because she thought it was something that would resonate with New York audiences).

Guerrero also plays a Native American woman, Winona, whom Jerry is interested in. Things get off on the wrong foot when she sees Jerry give Elaine a statue of a cigar store Indian as a peace offering, and is offended. They go downhill from there, as Jerry ties his tongue in knots trying to avoid saying the wrong thing and the most innocuous remarks become verbal minefields of political incorrectness.

There are a couple of other very memorable subplots. It's the episode where Kramer comes up with his idea about a coffee table book about coffee tables, and Elaine incurs the wrath of Frank Costanza, (the always hilarious Jerry Stiller), by taking his TV Guide to read on the subway, thus breaking up his prized collection.

(As someone who looked forward every week to TV Guide arriving in the mail when I was a kid, I share his pain. I can still remember how exciting it was when the Fall Preview issue came and I found out which movies would have their television premieres that season. It was always the fattest issue of the year. It's hard to believe now, but in the days before cable and VCRs, you had two options for watching movies: see them in the theater or wait until they came on network television. And yes, there were only three channels back then. I'm not even sure PBS existed yet).

Letts has a very small part in The Strike, an episode from Season 9 that aired on Dec. 18, 1997, but it looms large in Seinfeld history. It's the "Festivus" epsiode, celebrating the holiday that Frank Costanza invented because he hated the commercial aspects of Christmas.

For the uninitiated, the Festivus celebration includes feats of strength and the Airing of Grievances. As Frank explains it, after the Festivus meal, you gather your family around the table and tell them all the ways they've disappointed you throughout the year.

Letts only has about three lines and maybe a minute of screen time. He plays a counter guy at H&H Bagels, a New York City institution, where Kramer used to work before going out on strike 12 years ago. Now that the strike is settled, he tries to get his old job back.

I found out about Letts' connection to Seinfeld in an interview with Associated Press writer Colleen Long. In the interview, Letts talks about his writing process, the genesis of August: Osage County, his work with Chicago's Steppenwolf, and about the four years he spent in Los Angeles trying to make it as an actor. (Despite his success as a playwright, he tells Long that he's primarily an actor).

Letts sounds very happy that he returned to Chicago, and as an avid admirer of August: Osage County, I am, too. I've written before about the play's humor, emotional pull and true-to-life characters, and about the amazingly talented Steppenwolf cast. It deserves all the accolades it's been getting.

"The business was brutal, and the people in the business were brutal," Letts recalls about his time in Los Angeles. "I felt, ultimately, at the end of four years my options were to hide under the bed or go out and be humiliated, so I returned to Chicago and I'm really glad I did."

He says that Chicago suits him better, and he considers Steppenwolf his home. "No matter what happens, no matter how bad I get savaged, I get to go back to Steppenwolf and go back to work, as an actor, as a writer and as an artistic director," he says. "I have a place to go and work that supports me as an artist, and that's very rare in our business."

August: Osage County

As soon as I walked into Broadway's Imperial Theatre and got a look at the set for "August: Osage County," I was captivated. It was the most fascinating set I'd ever seen on a stage - the interior of a three-story house crammed with shabby furniture, taped-up windows and books piled up everywhere. Created by Todd Rosenthal, it just looked so lived-in, so real. What a perfect setting for the messy events that were about to unfold.

Playwright Tracy Letts, director Anna D. Shapiro and fellow members of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company have created a portrait of American family life that is searing, emotional, hilarious, witty, tragic and oh so very true. I was mesmerized by it and I can only imagine that this is how audiences felt when they saw "Long Day's Journey Into Night" or "Death of A Salesman." "August: Osage County" definitely belongs in a league with those American classics. The 3 1/2 hours I spent in the theater just flew by.

The play is set during a sweltering Oklahoma summer, and you can feel the heat on the actor's faces. It opens with patriarch Beverly Weston talking to Johnna Monevata, a young Native American woman he's hired to look after his wife, Violet. Weston, liquor bottle at hand, is played by Dennis Letts, the playwright's father. He explains that he drinks and his wife, who has mouth cancer, takes an assortment of pills. A poet, Weston gives the woman, played by Kimberly Guerrero, a volume of poetry by T.S. Eliot. (Interestingly, Eliot's first wife, whom he deserted, suffered from physical and emotional problems and was eventually committed to an asylum).

From the moment she enters, Violet Weston, played by the remarkable Deanna Dunagan, creates an unforgettable portrait of a sick, addicted, bitter, miserable, lonely woman. Still in her pajamas, her hair tousled, she stumbles down the staircase, her walk off-kilter, her speech slurred, her face twisted into a permanent scowl. Not only does she have mouth cancer, but almost everything that comes out of her mouth is acerbic, vindictive and cruel. Letts told TimeOut New York that Violet is based on his grandmother. When he finished the play, he gave it to his mother, novelist Billie Letts, to read, and her first comment was, “I think you’ve been very kind to my mother.”

When Beverly Weston disappears, the couple's three daughters are left to cope with their mother. In many ways, the relationship between Violet Weston and her daughters is the heart of the play. Violet Weston is judgmental, overly critical, and desperately afraid of being abandoned. And her daughters are desperately afraid of having to deal with her.

"August: Osage County" is about the lives and struggles of four generation of American women, a trajectory that runs from Violet Weston's own (and unseen) mother, through her life, and that of her daughters and granddaughter. Letts writes with razor sharpness, wit, empathy and total believability. My only criticism is that he writes so well for female characters, the male characters end up a little overshadowed.

Barbara, the eldest daughter, played by Amy Morton, lives in Colorado with her philandering husband, Bill (played by Steppenwolf co-founder Jeff Perry) and pot-smoking daughter Jean. Ivy, the middle child, played by Sally Murphy, lives nearby and is afraid and resentful that she will have to deal with her mother alone once her sisters leave. Karen, the flighty youngest daughter, played by Mariann Mayberry, lives in Miami with her fiance, Steve, played by Brian Kerwin. Also in the picture are Violet's sister, Mattie Fae, played by Rondi Reed, her husband, Charlie, played by Francis Guinan, and their son, Little Charles, played by Ian Barford. Madeleine Martin, who plays Jean and Troy West, portraying Sheriff Deon Gilbeau, round out the cast. Everyone except Martin and Kerwin are veterans of the play's sold-out Chicago run and they are all superb.

Letts gives Morton some of the best dialogue in the play. Her dilemma is all-too-recognizable for many American women, caught in the "sandwich" generation, struggling to take care of her child and her aging, increasingly needy mother, while holding down a job and trying to salvage her marriage. Her outburst midway through the play, when she's at her wit's end from the strain, is devastating. As someone who's experienced some of that same strain, I was blown away by the honesty of Morton's performance.

Guerrero also deserves special mention. She's probably best known for playing Jerry's girlfriend Winona in a very funny "Seinfeld" episode, "The Cigar Store Indian." In "August: Osage County," she hardly has any lines, yet I felt myself drawn to her no matter where she was on stage, bringing food from the kitchen to the dining room, or simply curled up on her bed on the top floor of the house, reading the book Beverly gave her. She is the servant who is almost unseen and yet sees everything. In a key piece of dialogue, she reminds us of the importance of family ties. I thought she was remarkable - because she had so little to say, yet her presence said so much.

Through the course of 3 1/2 hours, we learn how angry this family is at each other, the secrets they have kept from each other, and the ways they have hurt and betrayed each other. Failure casts a pall over this house: marriages are failing, parents are disappointed in their children, and we learn that after his first, early success, Beverly Weston never publishes a second volume of poetry.

But "August: Osage County" is more than angry outbursts. The banter early on between Mattie Fae and her husband, Charlie, is hilarious. And Letts has some very pointed, witty observations about how the Greatest and the Baby Boom generations view each other. "If you worked as hard as we did, you'd be president," sneers Violet. What made them the Greatest Generation, Barbara asks sarcastically, "because they were poor and hated the Nazis?" Everybody hated the f---ing Nazis."

Before I saw "August: Osage County," I only knew the Steppenwolf Theatre Company through its famous alumni - including Gary Sinise, John Malkovich, Joan Allen and John Mahoney. I walked out in awe of Steppenwolf and this amazingly talented group of actors. Regional theaters like Steppenwolf truly are national treasures. Where else, after all, would a 3 1/2-hour serious play by a relatively unknown playwright have a chance of getting produced, much less transferred to Broadway?

I'm afraid that once the stagehands strike ends, it will be serious plays like "August: Osage County," without recognizable stars, that will suffer. And that would be a shame. So if you're planning a trip to Broadway, please put this riveting, thought-provoking work at the top of your list. It deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as possible. I guarantee you will see people - and situations - that you know from your own life. You will be thoroughly entertained and thoroughly moved.