A review by cantordustbunnies
August: Osage County by Tracy Letts

4.0

A hideously impactful play which is just a little too melodramatic to take too seriously. It's definitely a good play along the lines of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Interiors, or Long Day's Journey Into Night but the characters are so mean to each other and the family is so dysfunctional that it veers more towards the ridiculous rather than the hauntingly tragic. Perhaps the ridiculous quality falls in line with the author's intention of it being more of a dark comedy, but if this is the case I would consider a sense of humor like that to be downright psychopathic. To a person like me though, that just makes the play more interesting. There were enough genuinely gut-wrenching scenes to give it a high place among intense family dramas. It's very good, but I personally didn't enjoy the "perversely comedic soap opera", over-the-top aspect of it.