AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY

On stage, this Pulitzer Prize winner was one of the funniest and most disturbing plays in many a Broadway season.

Playwright Stacy Letts, from Chicago’s cutting-edge Steppenwolf Theatre, wrote a stunningly crafted story of a dysfunctional family coming unglued as they gather after the funeral of their patriarch.

Meryl Streep would seem to be an ideal choice to play the widow, Violet, suffering mouth cancer and chemotherapy, who deals with her pain and loss with booze and pills.  The result unleashes a torrent of abusive and angry attacks on all those around her.  Does this seem to have humorous potential? No more than Martha’s outbursts in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf which proved riotous.  It depends on how it is played and how it is directed.

John Wells, coming from a TV Directing background, approaches the piece as though he were filming a faithful recording of the stage play. His camera is placed so that it often isolates and magnifies individual performances. 

What often happens is that the leading players, particularly Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, give stage worthy performances that are not nuanced for camera. 

The result is overacting and playing for results which highlight the emotional hysterics but reduces the humor and the astonishing absurdity of the dialogue. This is neither the fault of the playwright nor the actors.

In an interview Wells mentioned that he and Letts trimmed the 3-hour stage script down to a 2- hour screenplay.  In doing so the original has been flattened and all that remains is overplayed melodrama.   If you expect to see a vibrant stage-to-screen adaptation of an extraordinary and prize winning play this is not it.