“Dysfunctional” doesn’t begin to characterize the extended family of Beverly and Violet Weston of Pawhuska, Okla. Cancer-ridden and drug-ravaged matriarch Violet alone has enough personal demons to fill all of Osage County, and then some.
Yet Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning “August: Osage County” is commonly described as a “tragicomedy.”
With reason.
“There’s a lot of funny stuff that sneaks up on you,” said Francis Gercke, who is directing Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company’s production of “August: Osage County” which begins previews next ThursdayAug. 24 at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center in East Village. “Letts wrote something that is really wonderfully theatrical. When I read it, it was like every family reunion I’ve ever been to.”
In the play, which premiered in 2007 at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre and which was last staged locally in 2011 at the Old Globe, Violet Weston’s three daughters are among the throng that gathers at the Oklahoma house after the disappearance, and feared suicide, of patriarch Beverly. What ensues are the opening and re-opening of wounds, flying barbs, confrontations and until-then suppressed revelations.
Deborah Gilmour Smyth is portraying Violet in the Backyard Renaissance staging. She recalled first seeing “August: Osage County” on Broadway and being “really affected by it. I felt it was a big epic poem, Greek tragedy-ish or Shakespearean in its scope because so many things go wrong. There’s that feeling of complete brokenness of almost every single person in the story.”
Gilmour Smyth is joined by an all-star cast of mostly San Diego actors in this production, including her husband Robert Smyth, appearing as Beverly. The ensemble includes, among others, Megan Carmitchel, Faith Carrion, John DeCarlo, Kay Marian McNellan, Rob Lutfy (director of Backyard Renaissance’s “God of Carnage” earlier this year) and Jessica John and Anthony Methvin, Gercke’s co-founders in Backyard Renaissance.
“It was really fortunate that everybody was available and willing, and that everyone rearranged and accommodated their schedules so that they can do this,” said Gercke. “So much of directing a play is trusting the people you’ve cast in the roles.”
Of managing the sweeping arc of the play, Gercke quoted Tony-winning actor Jefferson Mays who once said of “Hamlet” that it was best played one scene at a time. “Not to minimize it,” said Gercke, “but let the narrative run its course and let the story that Tracy Letts wrote build.”
The role of Violet Weston has been a tour de force for the many who’ve played it.
“I’m getting to love her more as we do it (in rehearsal),” said Gilmour Smyth, who first discussed playing the part with Gercke before the onset of the pandemic. “But I’m getting more and more exhausted by her.”
While the character was described in the New York Times’ original Broadway opening review as “an evil mom to end them all,” Gilmour Smyth says she’s forged a degree of admiration for Violet: “There is something incredibly winning to me in how she fearlessly tells the truth as she sees it. Her answer to anything is meanness most of the time, but to her it’s truth.”
Staging a show with a cast as large as this one and in which the house itself is a character in a relatively small space such as the Tenth Avenue Arts Center is to Gercke a challenge, but also an opportunity. “The neat thing about Tenth Avenue,” he said, “is that you’ll feel like you’re looking through a keyhole or are right outside the window.”
For the actors, “It’s going to be feeling like we’re all in this together and just going for it,” said Gilmour Smyth. “No holds barred.”
‘August: Osage County’
When: Previews Thursday through Sept. 1. Opens Sept. 2 and runs through Sept. 16. Showtimes, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. 3 p.m. Sundays
Where: Backyard Renaissance Theatre Co. at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center, 930 Tenth Ave., downtown
Tickets: $18-$40
Phone: (760) 975-7189
Online: backyardrenaissance.com
Coddon is a freelance writer.
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