Prepare yourselves for the heat. The Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s newest production, “August Osage County,” will take the stage just in time for summer, opening on June 3. This dark comedy about the Weston family relationships has claimed five Tony Awards, including Best Play, and three Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Play, as well as a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Needless to say, we’re very excited to see this show come to The Rep, and even more so after we got to chat with come of the cast. We heard from producing artistic director Bob Hupp: Susanne Marley, who plays matriarch Violet; The Rep’s founding director Cliff Baker, who plays patriarch Beverly; LeeAnne Hutchison, who plays oldest daughter Barbara; Natalie Canerday, who plays Violet’s sister Mattie Fae; and Marc Carver, who plays the youngest daughter’s fiancé.
We found out about everything from the less-than-ideal Weston family dynamic, to the show’s adult content, to working with a dialect coach to pick up that mid-American plains flavor (including the effect of Natalie’s natural Southern drawl on her castmates). Read on to learn more about this can’t-miss production.
Soirée: There are a lot of complex characters in this show, so tell us a little about your roles.
Cliff Baker: I’m Violet’s husband, I’m a retired teacher poet and the woes of the world are weighing heavily on me. I’m not on stage long, but I leave an impression.
Bob Hupp: Cliff’s character appears in the first 10 minutes of the play, and the entire rest of the play revolves around his actions. They are the catalyst that sets off the entire plot.
Natalie Canerday: I’m from God’s country, Russellville, Arkansas. I’m playing Mattie Fae, I hen-peck my husband, I don’t like my kid and everything is my way or the highway. I’m kind of the comic relief in the show.
Susanne Marley: Oh, how do you describe Violet? She runs the house, which is in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma, and it is hot, there’s no place to go and she does not believe in AC. Things happen in the heat that don’t usually happen, and the whole group is stuck here. It’s my house, my rules, and if you don’t play along with my rules, there is a consequence.
BH: It’s incredibly demanding physically and emotionally, and we’re thrilled to have her here to do this. In Arkansas, we would call her a force of nature. Violet and Beverly are very flawed people. He’s a raging alcoholic, she enjoys her drug addiction. He’s decided to throw in the towel and she’s decided to try to claw her family back to her. She’s a master manipulator, but also the person who sees the truth in every situation, even if it’s very ugly and everyone else dances around it.
There’s kind of a famous scene in this play where they all sit down to dinner and it is cacophony. It’s 11 people talking at the same time. Somebody over there keys off of a word they hear over here, and if one thing gets out of order, the whole thing collapses. We have 11 human beings, who in real life are essentially strangers, and we have a very short period of time to craft these deep family relationships. The play requires it and our production requires it, so we’re very lucky these actors have bonded seemingly quickly.
LeeAnne Hutchison: There are three daughters who come with their various attachments, and I’m the oldest. I haven’t been home for a long time, but I do with my 14-year-old daughter and my husband. We all come from Boulder, Colorado, where I tried to recreate myself on some new kind of psychological footing to get away from home and to raise my daughter in a way that I don’t repeat that. The events that happen at the beginning of the play are big enough that I home and have to now manage and deal with being the oldest child in this family again.
Marc Carver: I am a new member of the extended family; I’m the fiancé of Karen who is the youngest daughter. I’m an entrepreneur, and I’ve probably spent a bunch of my adulthood in various businesses. My current venture may or may not be attached to security work, especially involving the Middle East. I definitely operate in the darker side of business where most people may not go. It’s a bit nefarious. It may not pass muster with many government agencies, but I’m willing to do those things, and i’m not really at liberty to discuss exactly what it is that I do.
BH: Most people, if they’re familiar with this play, is because they’ve seen the movie. The play and the movie are two different animals. What anyone thinks of the movie is their own opinion, but the play is a far more powerful, immediate, explosive, engaging drama than was able to be captured in the film. It’s very funny, but not sitcom funny, more cutting to the bone funny.
LH: The way things unfold in language kind of has a beauty and a precision to it that is behind the explosions that happen in the intimate relationships between people.
NC: And even though you despise so many characters in it, you can relate at least a little to each of them
BH: There are some that aren’t so lovely, but it’s so delicious to watch. I saw this play when it first opened in New York, not even sure what to expect. I was riveted and blown away and went back to see it again, because i knew it was a play that would survive. I did not want the play to end when it was over, and I can count on one hand the number of times that has happened.
LH: I saw it very early on as well, and I felt as though I’d just been laid flat. I kind of walked around in a trance for a while, thinking I hadn’t seen a new play that felt this important and this essential about the disfunction of a family and written with such humor.
BH: We’ve had the rights to this play for four years, but there are aspects of the play that are unique. The language is very strong, perhaps the most profane we’ve done on our stage, and the situations are very challenging in the context of a company that does a lot of family musicals. The Rep’s work is very diverse, and we would be remiss as a theater company if we did not share this play with our audience. I’m excited about it, and unapologetically so. We’ve communicated with our subscribers about the play, and even gave them options to choose a different production. With our over 3,000 subscribers, maybe 12 people chose to see something else.
SO: So why now?
BH: Individual plays are selected in context of a season, and so I felt in the context of the work we were doing this year, when it would work in terms of the time I could dedicate to directing it, when could we assemble the cast we would need to bring it to life and when I felt like we had all the right pieces that would give us the best possible advantage. Productions are fragile things, and you can never be sure everything is going to come together, even with your best laid plans, but certainly in this instance, i felt that the conditions had gelled to do this play now. In the last few days in a room with these actors, I feel like the play is in very good hands.
CB: Last season you had “Clybourne Park” and you had “Red,” you had really potent pieces of contemporary American theater balancing the lightness of a musical. This season is the perfect mix to bring in this after you’ve seen a “Mary Poppins.” It lets the audience know that the world is so huge and that theater has something else to do besides entertain. However, when you get a brilliant play like “Red” or “August Osage County,” you’ll find that the humor is there within that darkness. Audiences love laughing at the inappropriate, and it wraps up this season with a bow.
SO: What is it about this story or your particular characters that really resonates with you?
SM: Bob gave us homework where we had to find the reference point for each of our characters, how you relate something in this play to your own life, and everyone’s were all vastly different and all equally as valid and right on point. I think the reason this play lasted so long is that every person watching can find something in one of those characters that means something to them – whether it’s good, bad, or it might make them howl with laugher saying “that’s just like my grandma” or “that’s my teenage daughter.”
LH: As one of the daughters in the story, the central thing about the deep sense of responsibility that also crosses into guilt that we carry about wanting to solve our parents’ lives is so present at the core of the play for my character. It’s trying to move away from that geographically, but the fact that you never get rid of it. You care about your parents’ problems and pain, and some sense of feeling like it’s your responsibility to solve it, on whatever irrational level one may carry that. It’s trying to dispel it, and even thinking you don’t have that anymore, and then coming back to the parental home and you’re just immediately hooked back into that place again and what a struggle that is. That’s what’s so juicy about my role is getting to move through that psychological terrain that is so real.
CB: People never see this, but Barbara doesn’t see that she is her mother’s daughter through and through. The playwright, and this just speaks to his genius, put this little scene where you get a taste of Violet through Barbara in the way that she relates to her husband and her child, which is every bit as cruel and vicious as the woman that she thinks is cruel and vicious. He did a brilliant thing in structuring the play where we get echoes of mama through this daughter.
BH: There are a few glimmers of hope in a few of these relationships, but it really is an examination of the modern mid-American family. This isn’t an analogy, but in the same way that the musical “The Book of Mormon” and “Angels in America” tackle the American-invented religion of Mormonism, this play takes place in the quintessential heartland of America: the plains. This is a very ambitious examination of where America is in its most rooted identity. It is not always an attractive unfolding of what has become of this homestead, in Oklahoma, the land rush state where opportunity took root without any encumbrances.
SO: Let’s talk a little about the setting and what it’s like working with the dialect coach.
NC: Well, it’s worked on me! Two different people have told me, “My god, you’re rubbing off on me. I’m going to be talking like you by the time this thing is over.” Yeah, I’m sorry, but that’s just what happens. I guess I’m contagious. But I am having to tone back some for the show and try not to sound so much like hill people as plains people.
SM: The problem for me is turning it back. I was brought up until second grade in West Virginia, and West Virginia sounds like “hill people,” so it’s easy for me to tap back into that. When we moved east, I got abused in third grade with that accent. You don’t say “yes sir, no ma’am” in the middle of Dupont country. They thought I was so weird.
NC: Basically everybody up here working on this show is a yankee, and I’m concerned about it. Now, I’m pretty loose, and not much bothers me, but a fake Southern accent is a knife in my heart. But I will say, these people have done an excellent job. I’ve not had a problem yet!
BH: And Oklahoma’s not the South, either, so it’s different. Our dialect coach is here as a resource. She’s not a slave driver, it’s just a tool for the actors. They come from all over the country with different backgrounds, and even in the play, not everyone’s from Oklahoma. All we’re trying to do is make sure we feel like we’re coming from the same universe. The fact that she works at UALR and is from Oklahoma is just great.
As for the design of the play, the house that they inhabit is a character in itself. It’s this three-story American farmhouse. The tender relationships and moments only ever happen outside the house. The thing is like a Stephen King novel. There’s a reason the play’s set in August. there’s no escape from the brutality of the heat, that makes everyone crazier.
SO: There’s a bit of a hen party vibe going on here. Is that fair to say? And if so, what’s that like?
CB: I love it. I’m over the whole “who rules the roost” thing, so these characters with problems and strong points of view are just fascinating. In the end, I lose, the women win.
MC: My character is the outsider, and he really likes the ladies, especially a woman who is intelligent and has drive, spunk. I mean, that all gets twisted, but still.
CB: Then again, there would be no play without the men. We don’t feel left out. Most of the guys are just trying to avoid domination, and one of the ways to do that is to dominate. Sooner or later, most of the guys step up to the plate and say “I’ve had enough.”
LH: The women in the play get to carry a strong center which in this play is the parent-child dynamic, that just so happens to play out in the mother-daughter relationship in this story. That’s where that feeling of women being more central happens here, but otherwise the group dynamic as a whole is very important.
BH: In many instances, the men in this play are more reactive, like how you stand at the ocean and just get hit by the waves. However, there are male characters who are powerful forces in the play. There’s one scene where I found myself siding with a male character just because I could identify what he was going through. And that’s the key: Everyone’s going to find someone to identify with in this play at every phase along the way.