American Kronos
Expectations can be a bitch.
Particularly when the drama in question is heralded as "the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years" and wins the Pulitzer Prize.
And while August: Osage County is quite good, these immense laurels do the play a tremendous disservice: it is neither novel nor groundbreaking, but instead an epic melodrama in the great American tradition. Of an entire family coming together under one roof only to level each other with scathing invectives and emotionally excoriating truths.
At first, I reacted strongly against the play as another totem in the tired Oedipal drama between The Greatest Generation and The Baby Boomers -- particularly as the only representative of Generation X/Y is, quite literally, 14-year old jail-bait who only seems to justify Baby Boomer filial overbearingness [mind you, this impression may have been exacerbated by the fact that my Student Rush ticket placed me in the Mezzanine alone with people twice my age -- a discrepancy that was painfully vocalized during any drug-related situations].
But as I reflected more upon the play and its thematic predecessors - Look Homeward, Angel and Long Day's Journey Into Night spring immediately to mind - I realized that this generational conflict is less historically specific and perhaps more of a peculiar strain of the American character. One that draws its Freudian rebellious nature from the mythical founts of the American Revolution and, less directly, Young Man Luther.
It is fitting then, that for all the bombast and lack of subtle plotting, August: Osage County may thematically orbit around the taciturn and curious Native American in the attic -- the only character, curiously enough, to lack parents and demonstrate any semblance of composure.
I assume this is no accident.
Particularly when the drama in question is heralded as "the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years" and wins the Pulitzer Prize.
And while August: Osage County is quite good, these immense laurels do the play a tremendous disservice: it is neither novel nor groundbreaking, but instead an epic melodrama in the great American tradition. Of an entire family coming together under one roof only to level each other with scathing invectives and emotionally excoriating truths.
At first, I reacted strongly against the play as another totem in the tired Oedipal drama between The Greatest Generation and The Baby Boomers -- particularly as the only representative of Generation X/Y is, quite literally, 14-year old jail-bait who only seems to justify Baby Boomer filial overbearingness [mind you, this impression may have been exacerbated by the fact that my Student Rush ticket placed me in the Mezzanine alone with people twice my age -- a discrepancy that was painfully vocalized during any drug-related situations].
But as I reflected more upon the play and its thematic predecessors - Look Homeward, Angel and Long Day's Journey Into Night spring immediately to mind - I realized that this generational conflict is less historically specific and perhaps more of a peculiar strain of the American character. One that draws its Freudian rebellious nature from the mythical founts of the American Revolution and, less directly, Young Man Luther.
It is fitting then, that for all the bombast and lack of subtle plotting, August: Osage County may thematically orbit around the taciturn and curious Native American in the attic -- the only character, curiously enough, to lack parents and demonstrate any semblance of composure.
I assume this is no accident.
posted by d l wright at 4/09/2008 01:36:00 PM
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