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Big show, big set - big success

By Matt Windmam | amNewYork Theater Critic

If Eugene O'Neill wrote a drama about family life in 2007, what would it look like? Take a look at Tracy Letts' "August: Osage County," a kind of contemporary mix of "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and "The Little Foxes" that is superb in its own right.

Few new plays come to town with a three-story house set (complete with kitchen, living room, bedroom and attic) and a three-and-a-half-hour length (complete with two intermissions). But "August: Osage County," which comes straight from its Steppenwolf Theatre Company run in Chicago, is more than worthy of breaking a few rules.

The sprawling plot begins with the sudden disappearance of family patriarch Beverly Weston, reluctantly forcing the rest of the Weston clan -- daughters, in-laws, cousins, niece and all -- to return to their rural Oklahoma home to comfort their unstable mother. Of course, once the dysfunctional pack returns, the mom's drug addiction forces them to confront a whole mess of other issues: cancer, suicide, incest, pedophilia, marijuana, alcoholism, depression, adultery, abuse and anything else you can imagine. Does this sound like an overblown soap opera? Don't worry. Tracy Letts, author of the plays "Killer Joe" and "Bug," has used his talent for writing compact thrillers to pen an epic drama of ambitious proportions.

Perhaps the most amazing thing of all about "August: Osage County" is that in spite of its length (a few scenes could have easily been cut), you actually become increasingly engrossed in the emotion and action as the show rolls along.