#1. August: Osage County
By Tracy Letts
Three and a half hours long and boasting the worst title on Broadway, Tracy Letts's new play arrived in New York from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre with a lot to prove. Miraculously, it's better than we could have dreamed. The suicide of a retired Oklahoma professor is the impetus for a ferocious family get-together. The pill-popping matriarch has echoes of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night; the withering sarcasm recalls Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Acts of startling psychological cruelty mix with moments of heartrending warmth; banal marital problems dovetail with shocking hints of incest. Yet nothing seems forced or hyped for effect. This original and corrosive black comedy deserves a seat at the dinner table with the great American family plays.