Sat. May 8 & Sun. May 9

It's disheartening to think that Tracy Letts' Tony-and-Pulitzer winning "August: Osage County," on its first Boston run, is here for less than a week, and in fact, concludes with performances this weekend at the Colonial Theatre. That that's all the shows Broadway Across America thought would sell. This is one of the most powerful pieces of theater I've seen, period. Its an Arthur Miller-Tennessee Williams-like exploration of explosive family dysfucntion. Let me count the ways: There's Beverly Weston (Jon DeVries), an alcholic failed poet who begins the play running down his life with his newly hired Indian housekeeper Johnna Montevata (DeLanna Studi). He's not long for this world or this play. (Sorry, the plot does take off after he does.) His wife, Violet Weston (Estelle Parsons, in photo, who is absolutey fabulous) is a pill-popping semi-zombie who's coped with disappointment and failure in her own way. "I am a drug addict," she says. "I am addicted to drus, pills, especially downers. Y'see these little blue babies? These are my best fucking friends and they never let me down. Try to get 'em away from me and I'll eat you alive." They've been together forever and are oddly compatible in their misery and strife. But he wants out and gets out. Goes fishing, sort of. The three daughters - Barbara Weston (Shannon Cochran), Karen Weston (Amy Warren), Ivy Weston (Angelica Torn) - reconvene to figure out what to do. Except the unmarried Ivy - with no makeup and no evident interest in men, Violet accuses her of being a lesbian - who's paid the price by staying at home to look after her parents. Turns out she does have an interest in a certain man and this is something that will complicate family matters even mmore.
There's Jean Fordham (Emily Kinney) a pot-smoking licentious young thang, teenage (14? 15? 16? 17?) daughter of Barbara and professor Bill (Jeff Still), who's going to separate from Barbara as he's found a young college girl who completes him now. Jean becomes the not unwilling participant in a tryst with slimeball-businessman Steve Heidebrcht (Laurence Lau).
That's some of it. Every character is playing out some kind of drama/trauma here and the interwoven clashes and expertly staged. Your attention (and sympathy and disgust) shifts from character to character. No one here is good; no one is evil. Everyone lives, as one of the characters says at one point, in that in-between shade of gray space. No one's gone through life without making mistakes or failing to live up to expectations. Some failures are more public, some more private. Here, over the course of a three-hour-plus, two intermission play, they all come tumbling out. Volatile? Oh, yeah. The volatility is ratcheted up neatly as the brewing disenchantment in the first act boils over big time in the third. It's a long play, sure, but there no dull stretches. There's a panoply of charcters to try and keep track of, but no shortage of high-wattage conflict. Sister v. sister, husband v. wife, grandchild v. parents/grandparent. No one steals the show - the cast is uniformly top-notch - but Parsons, as the crumbling, but vicious and contentious matriarch, is amazing. She had this role on Broadway, too. She stumbles about in a stupor, but then rouses herself to fire broadsides across the table at a family dinner, where, inevitably, plates end up crashing to the floor and awful truths are revealed. Parsons is 82 and six years ago was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Some of you folks may remember her as Blanche Barrow, the other quarter of the Bonnie and Clyde and Buck gang in the 1967 movie "Bonnie and Clyde," that starred Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. She was a tough broad then; she's a tough broad now.
The genius of Letts' "August" is its mix of caustic humor and drop-dead pain. If it recalls some moments from your own family history, well, I wouldn't be surprised, even if your family was in far better shape than this one. The conflicts, if not the scope of the conflicts, seemed pretty recognizable to people in the audience. The hidden lives, the dirty secrets, the (not so) quiet desperation.
The set is large dollhouse: a first floor with kitchen, living room and dining room, a second floor alcove, an attic bedroom. The actors are constantly scrambling up down and around. Some of the best scenes, actually, are when they're squabbling and racing about, and you catch just bits of the vitriol as they are spat out and cut through the clutter. It's amazingly well-staged chaos. Of the characters, Barbara is the one who takes the longest, saddest journey. She's a spitfire, or as soon-to-be-ex-husband Bill says, "You're thoughtful Barbara, but you're not open. You're passionate, but you're hard.You're a good decent, funny, wonderful woman and I love you but you're a pain in the ass." Everyone's world is turned upside down to some degree, hers the most. "August: Osage County" - set in the plains of Oklahoma, where "the plains" is equated to "the blues" by one of the characters early on - comes at you like a submachine gun. There's a lot of laughter, a bit more pain, and a thoroughly involving experience. It sweeps you up in a way live theater is meant to. It's no escapist flight of fancy. It's a hard-knocking play about how uncertain and ugly life and family can get. There's no hugs at the end. There's the feeling that this is something that will continue to spin out of control for everyone. Maybe that's why this is a tough sell. It's no "Wicked" and no "Lion King." There's tough stuff here, but I'd argue you won't be more thoroughly emotionally involved in a show this year.

Tickets: $81-$35. Friday at 8, Saturday at 2 and 8. Sunday at 2 and 7:30.

106 Boylston St., 800-982-2787 www.BroadwayAcrossAmerica.com/Boston