August: Osage County

For this six weeks, I went to see August: Osage County at the Ahmanson Theatre. I personally loved this play because of the characters. I loved how dysfunctional the whole family is and there was a lot of comic relief which helped because the rest of the play was very intense. My favorite character was the mom because of how blunt and uncaring they made her. She was also in my favorite part when Ivy is about to find out that Little Charles is her brother so they cannot move to New York together but she has not found out yet so she's yelling at Barb because Barb keeps telling her to eat the catfish. Ivy throws something on the floor which shatters and Barb says, "What, are we throwing shit now?" and she throws something, too. Then, although she was completely not involved in the conversation, the mom throws her plate on the floor, too. I thought that was the funniest thing ever and I would randomly burst out laughing during the rest of the play which did not make me very popular with the people I was sitting around. There was a lot of crude humor in this play that was difficult for my mom to understand so I do not think it was the best choice for us but I really did love this play. The plot was interesting and quite different from anything I have ever seen. I do wonder whether the playwright was disturbed in the mind, but I may just be assuming things there. The actors were awesome but I did not see the point in having Barb's daughter. I do not think that she added anything to the play as a whole and instead, she just confused me with her talk about pot with Johanna in the attic room. I guess she was needed to show how the fiance was a terrible man but that one scene with Johanna really did seem unnecessary. I really liked how even when things were happening in the front room, there were still people moving in the other rooms like there would be if this was a real family. The lighting was nice how it lit up when something was happening in a specific room but it did make things seems a bit less realistic because of it. There would not be lights in a room just because you are talking to your mom or something. If it was dark, fine but these lights just randomly came on. It was also a bit confusing with the way the set was created. It was probably the best way to show it as possible, but I hated how the front door and the walkway outside was seen from the little room at the side. I could not discern that the room was actually part of the inside of the house until later. Sometimes, I got the characters mixed up, too when the lights went off because Barb and her husband were sleeping on the pull-out couch once and the next time was the younger sister and her fiance. Overall, I did really like this play and although I would not necessarily see it again, I would recommend it for other people. And I really liked the people on the side doing the sign language because they were acting along with it. Pretty cool.