August: Osage County Production Pack

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY PRODUCTION PACK

Photo: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

CONTENTS 2 3 4 5 6 11 14 15 16 17 18 20 22 23 24 25 26 30 37

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THE COMPANY QUOTATION WELCOME INTRODUCTION CAST CREATIVE TEAM REHEARSAL PHOTOS PRODUCTION PHOTOS TRAILER MAKING THE TRAILER MEET THE DIRECTOR MEET THE CAST MEET THE DESIGNER THE MODEL BOX MEET THE LIGHTING DESIGNER MEET THE COMPOSER PRESS PREVIEWS PRESS REVIEWS CONTACT DETAILS

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29 AUG - 16 SEP 2017

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY A Play by Tracy Letts Directed by Andrew Panton CAST Beverly Weston

John Buick

Violet Weston

Ann Louise Ross

Barbara Fordham

Emily Winter

Bill Fordham

Lewis Howden

Jean Fordham

Emma Mullen

Ivy Weston

Beth Marshall

Mattie Fae Aiken

Irene Macdougall

Charlie Aiken

Barrie Hunter

Little Charles Aiken

Ewan Donald

Johnna Monevata

Betty Valencia

Karen Weston

Angela Darcy

Steve Heidebrecht

Liam Brennan

Sherrif Deon Gilbeau

John Macaulay

CREATIVE TEAM Writer

Tracy Letts

Director

Andrew Panton

Designer

Alex Lowde

Lighting Designer

Chris Davey

Composer

Michael John McCarthy

Fight Director

EmmaClaire Brightlyn

Voice/Dialect

Ros Steen

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“

The child comes home and the parent puts the hooks in him. The old man, or the woman, as the case may be, hasn’t got anything to say to the child. All he wants is to have that child sit in a chair for a couple of hours and then go off to bed under the same roof. It’s not love. I am not saying that there is not such a thing as love. I am merely pointing to something which is different from love but which sometimes goes by the name of love. It may well be that without this thing which I am talking about there would not be any love.

But this thing in itself is not love. It is just something in the blood. It is a kind of blood greed, and it is the fate of a man.

It is the thing which man has which distinguishes him from the happy brute creation. When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a hame trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can’t get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can. And the good old family reunion, with picnic dinner under the maples, is very much like diving into the octopus tank at the aquarium.

Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men

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WELCOME

From the moment I knew I was going to be fortunate enough to work with this amazing theatre company I wanted to direct August: Osage County as my first production. I’ve been passionate about the play since I first saw it, and it immediately struck me as a perfect piece for the Rep Ensemble as it was developed by an ensemble theatre company originally, and continues a strong tradition of important contemporary American playwriting on this stage.

Steppenwolf Theatre Company presented the play in Chicago with their own ensemble in 2007, written by one of its members, Tracy Letts. What that company and the Rep share is a commitment to foregrounding ensemble acting in order to tell thought provoking stories. This play does that brilliantly as it requires the actors to collaborate and develop their chemistry together to depict the Westons, the large complicated family at the heart of the play. The Rep is the perfect environment to present the Scottish Premiere and celebrate the play’s tenth anniversary.

Many of the contemporary American plays previously presented here at the Rep have arguably exposed the myth of the happy nuclear family while putting strong, endlessly watchable characters at the forefront and I feel that August: Osage County continues that tradition of American playwriting. It has been suggested that the Weston family symbolise the collapse of American idealism, while echoing the despair of the Bush years.

Whatever our own family experience is, there is possibly something here for many of us to relate to.

Andrew Panton Artistic Director

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INTRODUCTION

The world-renowned Steppenwolf Theatre Company staged the first production of August: Osage County by the actor and playwright Tracy Letts in Chicago in 2007. It transferred to Broadway, with mostly the same cast members, later that year.

The dark autobiographical comedy about a sprawling, brawling, dysfunctional family reunion in Osage County, Kansas, delighted audiences from the beginning. Tracy Letts told one interviewer, “The audience just started to bubble with that feeling of ‘We’re all in this together.’”

To his amazement, the critics compared him to Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill, two of America’s greatest writers. He said afterwards, “I’m not fit to tie Eugene O’Neill’s shoelaces. At the same time, if you told me I had a choice of watching Long Day’s Journey Into Night (by O’Neill) or August: Osage County, I’m going to see August: Osage County, because there are no laughs in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and I do like a few laughs. If you’re not entertaining, what the hell’s the point?”

Steppenwolf brought the play to the National Theatre in 2008 when The Guardian critic Michael Billington wrote, “Letts may not be the new O’Neill but he proves that American dramatists are invariably at their best when treating family life as an extension of civil war. His real strength lies in his understanding of the dynamics of family life, and in this respect he is as close to Ayckbourn as he is to O’Neill or Albee.”

It went on to be produced in Australia, Germany, Austria, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Romania, Poland, India, Uruguay and Peru.

In 2013 Tracy Letts adapted August: Osage County as a film directed by John Wells, starring Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliette Lewis and the late Sam Shepard as the family patriarch who has gone missing. Both Streep and Roberts received Academy Award nominations for their performances, for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress.

Letts is the only person to have won both a Tony award for Best Actor for his performance as George, the brow-beaten husband in the 2012 Broadway revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and a Pulitzer Prize for August: Osage County in 2008.

Nick Smurthwaite © John Good

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CAST The Talented Mr Ripley, Gypsy, The Graduate, A Lie of the Mind, Macbeth, Scenes From an Execution, Dumbstruck!, The Danny Crowe Show, Flora the Red Menace, as well as Dancing at Lughnasa, The Duchess of Malfi, Nightflights, Pants, Measure for Measure, The Seagull, Mince?, The Winter’s Tale, Plague, Cabaret, The Playboy of the Western World, All My Sons and Sexual Perversity in Chicago.

JOHN BUICK Beverly Weston

John graduated from RSAMD (now Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) in 1968 and over a career spanning 44 years has appeared in well over 200 productions. He Emily was also assistant director on Who’s Afraid has performed regularly in all the major Scottish of Virginia Woolf? and directed The Shape of a Girl. theatres. In England he has worked in York, Birmingham, Farnham, The Young Vic, Barbican, Southampton, and Dartford theatres and ANN LOUISE ROSS further afield in Belfast, Dublin, Toronto, East Violet Weston Germany, Iran and Japan. John has also enjoyed a successful and extensive radio career, having taken part in drama broadcasting throughout Ann Louise has worked the last 4 decades. extensively in theatre for nearly 40 years and has EMILY WINTER been a member of Dundee Barbara Fordham Rep Ensemble for the past 18 years.

Emily has been a member of Dundee Rep Ensemble for the past 18 years.

Previous work with Dundee Rep includes: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Monstrous Bodies, Death of a Salesman, The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, Much Ado About Nothing, Love Song, Witness for the Prosecution, The Witches, Midsummer (a play with songs), Great Expectations, Titus Andronicus, The Gamblers (co-production with Greyscale Theatre Company), Cars and Boys, And Then There Were None, The BFG, Hecuba, Victoria, Kora, Time and the Conways (co-production with the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh), The Snow Queen, Whisky Galore, She Town, The Tempest, Forfeit (a co-production with Òran Mór), Steel Magnolias, Cinderella, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off (co-production with the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh), The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, A Doll’s House, Talking Heads (actor and director), Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Elephant Man, The Cherry Orchard, Peer Gynt (co-production with National Theatre of Scotland, 2007 and 2009 national tour), Mother Courage and Her Children, Les Parents, Romeo and Juliet, Playhouse Creatures, Sunshine on Leith, Hansel and Gretel, Sweet Bird of Youth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Monkey, DUNDEE REP

Her previous work with Dundee Rep includes: Death of a Salesman, Much Ado About Nothing, Little Red and the Wolf, Witness for the Prosecution, The Witches, Great Expectations, Blood Wedding, Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen…, Cars and Boys, Promises Promises, Further Than the Furthest Thing, Steel Magnolias, Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, A Christmas Carol, Peer Gynt, Sunshine on Leith, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ubu the King, Gypsy, Scenes From an Execution, Flora the Red Menace, Twelfth Night, Dancing at Lughnasa, The Winter’s Tale, Cabaret, All My Sons, Hansel and Gretel and Mince?

Ann Louise Ross won a CATS Award for Best Female Performance for her role in Further Than the Furthest Thing, also with Dundee Rep Ensemble.

Her TV and film credits include: Trainspotting, The Acid House trilogy, The Key, The Bill, Rebus, Hamish Macbeth and River City, as well as numerous radio broadcasts. She will also feature in the upcoming remake of Whisky Galore.

Ann Louise plays Grannie Island in the hit children’s CBeebies story Katie Morag, winner of the Scottish BAFTA for Best Children’s Programme.

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LEWIS HOWDEN Bill Fordham

radio.

Screen credits include: In Plain Sight (ITV) and The Wife (Feature film).

Lewis trained at the RSAMD Emma is delighted to be making her professional (now Royal Conservatoire debut at Dundee Rep. of Scotland) and has worked extensively in IRENE MACDOUGALL theatre, film, television and Mattie Fae Aiken

Theatre work includes: In My Father’s Words Dundee Rep, A Slow Air Borderline, Dunsinane, Calum’s Road, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, Our Teachers A Troll, To Begin National Theatre of Scotland, A Christmas Carol, Educating Agnes, Confessions of a Justified Sinner, The BFG, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Beauty and the Beast, Tartuffe, Merlin, Mother Courage, Cuttin’ a Rug, Changed Days Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, Found at Sea, The Artist Man and the Mother Woman, Any Given Day, Petrol Jesus Nightmare #5 (In the Time of the Messiah), The Nest, Olga, Knives in Hens, The House Among the Stars, Loose Ends Traverse, Macbeth, Medea, King Lear Theatre Babel, A Slow Air (with 59E59 NY and The Tricycle, London), Edwin Morgan’s Dreams & other Nightmares, Defender of the Faith, Beauty Queen of Leenanne, The Trick is to Keep Breathing Tron Theatre, Nightingale and Chase, No Mean City Citizens Theatre, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, The Big Funk, The Crucible, Glengarry Glen Ross Arches, Riddance Paines Plough, The Hearts Story Kings, Fire in the Basement Communicado, Word for Word Magnetic North, Frankie and Johnny, Broken Glass Rapture, Quelques Fleurs, Tartuffe Nippy Sweeties, View from Castle Rock Stellar Quines; various plays for Òran Mór, recently including The War Hasn’t Started Yet and Samuel Johnson goes to Scotland.

Television includes: West Skerra Light Shetland, Hope Springs, Taggart, Rebus, Monarch of the Glen, Dr Finlay, Strathblair, Turning World, The Chief, Butterfingers, Rosaleen. Film includes: For Those in Peril, Spores Aberdeen, The Blue Boy, Gare Au Mare, Slide. Lewis has also performed in numerous plays for BBC Scotland and Radio 4.

EMMA MULLEN Jean Fordham

Irene has been a member of Dundee Rep Ensemble for the past 18 years.

Previous work with Dundee Rep includes: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Death of a Salesman, George’s Marvellous Medicine, The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, Little Red and the Wolf, Witness for the Prosecution, The Witches, Midsummer (a play with songs), Blood Wedding (co-production with Graeae and Derby Theatre), James and the Giant Peach, The Glass Menagerie, Woman in Mind, The BFG, Hecuba, Victoria, Kora, Time and the Conways (co-production with the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh), The Snow Queen, She Town, The Tempest, Cinderella, Futureproof (co-production with the Traverse Theatre), Anna Karenina, What Love Is and Forfeit (both co-productions with Òran Mór), The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Sleeping Beauty, A Doll’s House, Talking Heads (actor and director), Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Elves and the Shoemakers, Equus, The Elephant Man, The Cherry Orchard, Peer Gynt (co-production with National Theatre of Scotland, 2007 and 2009 national tour), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (winner of CATS 2009 Best Actress Award), Mother Courage and Her Children, Les Parents Terribles, Romeo and Juliet, Sunshine on Leith, Sweet Bird of Youth, Gypsy, The Graduate, The Visit, A Lie of the Mind, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Duchess of Malfi, The Seagull, Dancing at Lughnasa, Plague, Mince? and many more.

For Dundee Rep, Irene has directed Much Ado About Nothing, Whisky Galore and Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen... Irene has worked extensively in theatre, radio and television, and is a founder member of the acclaimed Stellar Quines Theatre Company.

Emma trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Credits while training include: Cabaret, Brigadoon, Chess and Women On The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

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EWAN DONALD Little Charles Aiken Ewan trained at Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh.

Previous work for Dundee Rep includes: Death of a Salesman, George’s Marvellous Medicine, The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, Much Ado About Nothing, Love Song, Witness for the Prosecution, Sunshine on Leith, Sweet Bird of Youth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Talented Mr Ripley, The Graduate, The Visit, Merlin the Magnificent and Macbeth.

Scotland); Rites (National Theatre of Scotland/ Contact; A Christmas Carol (National Theatre of Scotland - CATS Award Winner 2012); The Monster in the Hall Best Ensemble Winner 2011 (NTS/Citizens Theatre); The Night Before Christmas (The Belgrade Theatre); Causeway, Kontomble, The King’s Kilt (Oran Mor Play, Pie and a Pint); Killing Me Softly (New Wolsey Theatre); Macbeth, Cyprus, Katie Morag (TMA Award Nominee 2006), Whisky Galore, Skylight, The Lonesome West, Jekyll & Hyde, The Designated Mourner, Kidnapped (Mull Theatre); Queen Lear, The Tempest, Pericles, King Lear, Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, The Winter’s Tale, A Comedy of Errors (Bard in the Botanics); Yellow Moon (Tag Theatre) TMA Award Winner 2008 - Best Show for Children and Young People; Peter Pan (The Citizens Theatre); Tam o’ Shanter, Fergus Lamont TMA Award Nominee 2007 (Communicado); Brave (Communicado/Sounds of Progress); Remembering Magnus (Grey Coast Theatre); The Bondagers (The Byre Theatre); Cinderella; Babes in the Wood (The King’s Theatre, Glasgow); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Princess and the Goblin, Cabaret, The Night Before Christmas, The Playboy of the Western World (Dundee Rep Ensemble).

Other credits include: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh; Dunsinane National Theatre of Scotland/Royal Shakespeare Company; The Three Sisters, An Imagined Sahara, An Arab Woman Speaks and Ramallah Tron Theatre; This Is Ceilidh PW Productions; Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis AandBC Theatre; Be Silent or Be Killed, From These Parts and Rapid Departure Right Lines Theatre; King Lear Citizens Theatre; The Prince: the Johnny Thomson Story Ambassador Theatre Group; Midsummer (a play with songs) Traverse Theatre; Wake Me in the Morning, Saint One, BARRIE HUNTER Saint Catherine’s Day, Baltamire and The Seagull Charlie Aiken Òran Mór; The Not-So-Fatal Death of Grandpa Fredo Vox Motus; Walden Magnetic North; Little Red Riding Hood The Arches; Sleeping Barrie has worked Beauty, Cinderella, Mother Goose, The Odd consistently in theatres Couple (female version), Death of a Salesman, across Scotland and the Proof, Sinbad and the Lost Princess and The UK with companies such Little Foxes Perth Theatre; Othello and A as the Royal Lyceum Midsummer Night’s Dream Bard in the Botanics Theatre Edinburgh, Tron Theatre, Perth and Damages Rapture Theatre.

Theatre, Dundee Rep, Borderline, Theatre TV work includes: New Town, Whatever It Takes Babel, Citizens Theatre and National Theatre of Scotland. and River City BBC. BETH MARSHALL Ivy Weston After graduating from University of Glasgow Beth trained with L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq.

Theatre Credits: The James Plays (Royal National Theatre/National Theatre of

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Previous work for Dundee Rep includes: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Death of a Salesman, The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, Much Ado About Nothing, Love Song, Witness for the Prosecution, The Mill Lavvies, Sunshine on Leith, Gypsy and Macbeth.

Recent theatre credits include: Stones in His Pockets and Whisky Galore Mull Theatre/ Citizens Theatre; Descent Òran Mór; Rough Island Mull Theatre/Òran Mór; The Drawer Boy Mull Theatre; Three Sisters Òran Mór; Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis AandBC Theatre; The Government Inspector Communicado/Aberystwyth Arts and Betrayal Citizens Theatre.

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TV and film credits include: The Angels’ Share Sixteen Films; Fast Romance Icklefix Films; Rab C Nesbitt Comedy Unit/BBC; The Field of Blood Slate North/BBC; Dear Green Place Effingee/BBC; Jess the Border Collie BBC; Still Game Effingee; Stacey Stone BBC and Velvet Soup BBC. BETTY VALENCIA Johnna Monevata Betty is a 2017 BA graduate of New College Lanarkshire and is delighted to make her professional debut with Dundee Rep Theatre.

Credits while training: Eve in Children of Eden (Websters, Glasgow), Claire in Ordinary Days (SWG3, Glasgow), Therapist in Lift the Musical (SWG3), Roberta in Zanna, Don’t! (The Townhouse, Hamilton), Ensemble in American Idiot (The Townhouse), Wee Jeannie in Aladdin (The Townhouse/Rutherglen Town Hall) Developments: Fatima in Curse of Love by German Munoz & Richard Seaman.

ANGELA DARCY Karen Weston Angela Darcy is an awardwinning actress, singer, voice-over artist and drama teacher.

Angela was born in Hamilton and is currently based in Glasgow, Scotland. She graduated from the RSAMD (now Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) with Honours. Since then she has worked on hundreds of projects in theatre, TV, radio, commercials, musicals and she also teaches drama to variety of age groups at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Angela’s portrayal of Janis Joplin in the musical biopic Janis Joplin: Full Tilt has gained her multiple awards including a Herald Angel 2015 and a Mercury Musical Theatre Network Award 2014. The stage show combines a live-gig where Angela (as Janis Joplin) performs some of Joplin’s much loved songs with a full band; and intertwined between the songs is an emotional biopic and heartbreaking insight into the psyche of the tumultuous rock star. Janis Joplin: Full Tilt has toured Scotland and was reviewed by the Scotsman as a “No.1 Top Pick” at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2015.

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LIAM BRENNAN Steve Heidebrecht Credits include: Inspector Goole in An Inspector Calls West End and UK Tour, Pop Sheeran in Diary of a Madman The Gate Theatre, Queensberry in Union Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, Ane Pleasant Satyre of The Thrie Estaitis AandBC Theatre, Clarence in Richard III and Orsino in Twelfth Night Belasco Theatre New York, Shakepeare’s Globe and The Apollo Theatre, Christy in The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Knox in Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, Wondrous Flitting, Alfieri in A View from the Bridge, Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, Everyone a new play, Macbeth in Macbeth, Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh and Nottingham Playhouse. Otto in Tom Fool Citizens Theatre Glasgow and Bush Theatre, London. Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, Bassanio in in The Merchant of Venice, Iago in Othello and Levin in Anna Karenina Royal Lyceum. Angelo in Measure for Measure, Edward in Edward II, Bollingbrooke in Richard II, Orsino in Twelfth Night, Macduff in Macbeth Shakespeare’s Globe. Odon Von Horvath in Tales From Hollywood for which he won the 2006 CATS Award for Best Actor. Dan in Stranger’s Babies, James Moffat in The Found Man Traverse Theatre; Max Haliday in Dial M For Murder Glasgow Citizens Theatre; Rab in Men In White Suits Traverse Theatre; Things We Do For Love Royal Lyceum; Philip Howard in The Speculator Traverse Theatre; Pat, Stephen and Heine in Family Traverse Theatre; Macbeth in Macbeth Brunton Theatre; Edmund in King Lear Traverse; Gilbert in Knives in Hens Traverse; Stefan in Wormwood Traverse; Brian in Babycakes Clyde Unity/Drill Hall; Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice Sheffield Crucible; Michael Collins in God Save Ireland Cried The Hero Edinburgh Festival; Montrose in Montrose Royal Lyceum; King Cumlin in Rumplestiltskin Cumbernauld Theatre; Chris Cole in The Business of Blood Calypso Productions; William Simpson in The Climbing Boy Castlemilk People’s Theatre; Dominic in The Gowk Storm Royal Lyceum; Fabian in Twelfth Night Salisbury Playhouse/Tour of China; Robin Hood, Whale, Hansel and Gretel and Merlin The Magnificent, all at Cumbernauld Theatre; Prospero in The Tempest and Macbeth in Macbeth both at Durham Theatre; Taming of The Shrew, Hobson’s Choice, Mary Rose, Mr Bolfry, Trivial Pursuits, Loot, all at the Royal Lyceum; The Caretaker, Twelfth Night, Cinderella, ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, Lucy and The Christmas Tree, and Macbeth, all for Dundee Rep.

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JOHN MACAULAY Sheriff Deon Gilbeau Theatre credits include: Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird Lyceum Edinburgh; Horizontal Collaboration Fire Exit; Betrayed Tron Theatre; Equus, Macbeth, Great Expectations Dundee Rep; Peer Gynt NTS/ Dundee Rep; The Snow Queen, A Streetcar Named Desire, Of Mice and Men Perth Theatre; Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream Bard In The Botanics; How to Steal a Diamond Vox Motus; 8000 Metres Suspect Culture; The Voices Forced Entertainment; The Two Gentlemen of Verona RNT; Henry V RSC; The Glass Slipper Southwark Playhouse; Caledonia Dreaming 7:84.

T.V. credits include: Waterloo Road, Gary Tank Commander, Burnistoun, Single Father, Still Game, River City, Jess the Border Collie, Rockface, English Express BBC; Missing STV; The Vice Carlton Television; Murder in Mind Chrysalis.

Radio includes: On the Skids, A Second Life, All at Sea BBC Scotland.

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CREATIVE TEAM ANDREW PANTON Director

TRACY LETTS Writer

Born in Fife, Andrew has worked across theatre, television, film and music in a career that has taken him all over the world.

For Dundee Rep, he directed Love Song and The Mill Lavvies and was Movement Director for the TMA and CATS award-winning Sweeney Todd.

Andrew has also directed productions for National Theatre of Scotland, Edinburgh Royal Lyceum, Glasgow Citizen’s Theatre, Royal & Derngate, Northampton, Perth Theatre and The Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough.

Work for TV includes Children in Need, Gareth Malone’s The Naked Choir and The Voice for BBC. Andrew has vocally directed Susan Boyle on her last four albums and devised and directed the UK and international tours of her live concert performances. In 2014 he directed a section of the opening ceremony of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games which was broadcast to 1.25 billion people worldwide.

Tracy Letts is the author of the plays The Minutes, Linda Vista, Mary Page Marlowe, Superior Donuts, August: Osage County (Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award), Man From Nebraska (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Time Magazine’s Top Ten Plays of 2003), Bug, and Killer Joe. Also an actor, he has appeared on Broadway in Will Eno’s The Realistic Joneses and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2013 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role).

Film appearances include: The Lovers, Christine, Imperium, Indignation, Wiener-dog, Elvis and Nixon, The Big Short. TV appearances include: Divorce HBO, two seasons as Senator Lockhart on Homeland Showtime, Seinfeld.

He is an ensemble member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and his appearances there include: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, American Buffalo, Betrayal, Homebody/Kabul, The Dresser, The Dazzle, Glengarry Glen Ross, Three Days of Rain and many others.

Andrew recently received a Professorship from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland where he is Artistic Director of Musical Theatre and is a previous winner of the Bruce Millar Award for directing.

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ALEX LOWDE Designer

West, Under Milk Wood Tron Theatre; Un Petit Moliere, The Silent Treatment Lung Ha; Bright Black, The Not-So-Fatal Death Of Grandpa Fredo Vox Motus; The Night Before Christmas, Alex read Drama at Hull Educating Ronnie Macrobert; The Woodland University before training in Hoedown Throwdown Trilogy, Puss In Boots design at Motley.

Platform; Grain In The Blood Traverse/Tron; JRR Tolkien’s Leaf By Niggle Puppet State Theatre; Theatre includes: The Interference Pepperdine Edinburgh; Heads Persuasion Manchester Royal Exchange, Up Kieran Hurley/Show & Tell; The Red Shed Pygmalion Headlong, West Yorkshire Mark Thomas/Lakin Mccarthy; A Gambler’s Playhouse and Nuffield Southampton, Three Guide To Dying Gary McNair/Show & Tell; Sisters Lyric Belfast, Dedication Nuffield Glory Janice Parker Projects; The Winter’s Theatre, Southampton, Dutchman Young Tale People’s Light and Theatre, Philadelphia; Vic Theatre, Linda The Royal Court, Lines The Drowning Pond Youth Music Theatre Uk; The Yard, Miss Julie Aarhus Theatre, Game Dalgety Theatre Uncut; Some Other Mother Almeida, Stink Foot The Yard, ‘Tis Pity She’s AJ Taudevin; Pause With A Smile The Arches; a Whore Shakespeare’s Globe, Krapp’s Last Birds and Other Things I Am Afraid Of Poorboy/ Tape Sheffield Theatre, Enjoy West Yorkshire The Arches; Soap, The Art Of Swimming, The Playhouse, The Body of an American The Heights Playgroup; The Coming World Making Gate, Edward II National Theatre, A Christmas Strange.

Carol, Takin’ over the Asylum, The Marriage of Figaro Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, To date he has collaborated on the making of Innocence Scottish Dance Theatre, Carousel seven Scotsman Fringe First award winners and Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Blake Diptych has been twice nominated for the Critics Award Laban, Victoria Station/One for the Road The for Theatre in Scotland in the category Best Use Young Vic/Print Room, A Clockwork Orange of Music and Sound.

Stratford East, While You Lie Traverse, The Glass Menagerie, Anna Karenina, Beauty and the Michael John’s primary instruments are guitar Beast, She Town, A Doll’s House, The Elephant and piano accordion. He has toured Europe and Man, Equus, all for Dundee Rep. Japan with Zoey Van Goey, Lord Cut-Glass and Aidan Moffat. He appears as an accordionist on albums by Alasdair Roberts, RM Hubbert, MICHAEL JOHN Niall Connolly, Emma Pollock, Trembling Bells MCCARTHY and Bonnie Prince Billy amongst others.

Composer Michael John is a Corkborn, Glasgow based composer, musician and sound designer. Current and future projects include: August: Osage County Dundee Rep; Rocket Post National Theatre Of Scotland.

Work for film includes co-composing/performing the score for Where You’re Meant to Be (Paul Fegan) and music for Spores (Richard and Frances Poet). He has also composed and recorded several series’ worth of radio music for BBC Learning: Movement First, Nina and the Neurons and Music First.

He is lead artist on Turntable, a participatory arts Theatre/Dance credits include: Futureproof Cork project in association with Red Bridge.

Everyman; Jimmy’s Hall Abbey Theatre, Dublin; Glory on Earth and A Number Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh; In Time O’ Strife, CHRIS DAVEY Blabbermouth, The Tin Forest, The Day I Lighting Designer Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, Truant, 99…100, Dolls National Theatre Of Scotland; The Gorbals Vampire, Trainspotting, Rapunzel, Previous designs for Into That Darkness, Fever Dream: Southside Dundee Rep: Anna and Sports Day Citizens Theatre; George’s Karenina, The Firebird, Marvellous Medicine, The Cheviot, the Stag Sweeney Todd, Who’s and the Black, Black Oil, The BFG and Steel Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Magnolias Dundee Rep; Light Boxes, Letters Beauty and the Beast, Romeo and Juliet, Peer Home: England In A Pink Blouse, The Authorised Gynt.

Kate Bane Grid Iron; The Weir, Bondagers Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh; The Lonesome

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Chris won the TMA Best Lighting Design for Dial ROS STEEN M for Murder (WYP) and Beyond the Horizon Voice/Dialect (Northampton) and three CATS Best Design Awards for Anna Karenina at Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, Beauty and the Beast and Ros has worked extensively Peer Gynt at Dundee Rep. He has designed in Theatre, Film and TV. extensively for Shared Experience Theatre, Work for Dundee Rep Royal Court, Hampstead Theatre, Lyric includes: The Resistible Hammersmith, Royal Exchange Manchester, Rise of Arturo Ui, Death of a West Yorkshire Playhouse, Royal Lyceum Salesman, The Cheviot, Theatre Edinburgh, Citizens Theatre, the Stag and the Black, Birmingham Rep and Manchester International Black Oil, Much Ado About Nothing, Great Festival.

Expectations, Tennessee Williams short plays, The Glass Menagerie, In My Father’s Words, For the National Theatre: Or You Could Time and the Conways, The Rise and Fall of Little Kiss Me, Beyond the Horizon, Spring Storm, Voice, Blood Wedding (with Graeae & Derby Harper Regan, The Seagull, The Pillars of the Theatre). Other work includes The Last Queen of Community, A Dream Play, Iphiginia at Aulis, War Scotland NTS/Stellar Quines, 306:Day, Glasgow and Peace, Baby Doll and The Colour of Justice.

Girls, Macbeth, Beautiful Burnout and Black Watch National Theatre of Scotland; Meet Me For the Royal Shakespeare Company: Titus At Dawn, Grain in the Blood, Milk, Swallow, Ciara, Andronicus, Twelfth Night, The Winter’s Tale, The Artist Man and Mother Woman, Outlying Pericles, Cymbeline, Alice in Wonderland, Night Islands, Solemn Mass for a Full Moon in Summer of the Soul, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer (as co-director) Heritage Traverse Theatre; Night’s Dream, Everyman (both also in New Romeo and Juliet West Yorkshire Playhouse; York), A Month in the Country, Troilus and Cyrano de Bergerac Northern Stage/Royal and Cressida, The Comedy of Errors (world tour), Derngate; Travels With My Aunt, Fever Dream Mysteria and Easter.

Southside, True West, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg Citizens’ Theatre; Hedda Gabler, Bondagers, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Mary EMMACLAIRE BRIGHTLYN Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off Royal Fight Director Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh; A Walk at the Edge of the World, Sex and God Magnetic North; Lifeboat Catherine Wheels; The Silver Darlings Originally from Canada, His Majesty’s Theatre/touring, Expensive Shit EmmaClaire Brightlyn is Adura Onashile/Made in Scotland. a freelance actor, fight director and teacher based Films include: God Help the Girl, I love Luci, in Glasgow.

Gregory’s Two Girls, Stella Does Tricks.

Fight directing credits include: Dragon (Vox Motus/NTS/Tianjin Children’s Art Theatre); West Side Story, Festen, Brigadoon (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland); The Maids, Miss Julie, The Libertine, Rapunzel, This Restless House Parts 1, 2 and 3 (Citizens Theatre); The Lonesome West (Tron Theatre); The Seafarer, Macbeth (Perth Theatre); Hamlet (Wilderness of Tigers); Slope (Untitled Projects); Titus Andronicus (Dundee Rep).

TV includes: Sea of Souls, Rockface, 2000 Acres of Sky, Monarch of the Glen, Hamish Macbeth, Changing Step.

Radio includes: East of Eden, Cloude Howe, The Other One, Gondwanaland and Look Back in Anger Radio 4. Ros is an Emeritus Professor of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Most recently EmmaClaire has been Fight Arranger on Scottish feature films Anna and the Apocalypse (Blazing Griffin) and Beats (Sixteen Films).

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REHEARSAL PHOTOS

Photos: Sean Millar

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PRODUCTION PHOTOS

Photos: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE PRODUCTION PHOTOS DUNDEE REP

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TRAILER ORIGINAL VERSION

EXTENDED VERSION

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MAKING THE TRAILER Who are Bonnie Brae Productions?

Bonnie Brae are Nikki and Ed who operate a small video production company in Dundee, specialising in Arts/Education/Social Care/Live events video content. We have been running as Bonnie Brae for seven years and our favourite people to work with are local arts organisations like Dundee Rep, DCA, Literary Dundee, Scottish Dance Theatre and Creative Dundee.

How did you approach creating the trailer for August: Osage County?

We met with Andrew, the director, and Caishlan and Gemma in the marketing department and had a discussion about the play, about what the play hoped to achieve, and about who we wanted the trailer to reach. We also talked about finding the best way to express what the play is about without spoiling the plot. We wanted viewers to be interested in the characters enough to come and see the show. Because film is a different medium to theatre we had to make something that would work on screen rather than on stage. In the play there are a number of good family dinner scenes, we took parts from each of these to make a new dinner scene that would work as a short film/promo.

We also decided to make the film seem hot, sweaty and claustrophobic (just like families can be) and we wanted viewers to watch it and think “that’s just like my nan” or “my brother is totally like that!” We met with the cast to find out their favourite lines from the show and to find out a bit about what they felt about the play. We then wrote a script. Andrew then workshopped the script with the actors so they were familiar with it and so it worked on its own, until it was self contained. We got a crew together, hired a special light to put over the table, used the Rep’s props to make a dining room and spent 3 hours filming the actors. We took 18 shots in total and then went to the edit the next day.

What challenges did you face in the editing process?

The main editing challenge was to make the film fast and snappy, and short enough for Facebook/ twitter etc where people don’t spend long watching videos. The first edit was about 4 minutes long and then we got it down to 1 minute 45 seconds. The hard part was choosing what to cut out as the actors were all so good and their lines were great.

What advice would you give a young person who aspires to be a film maker?

The best way to learn to be a film maker is to go and make a film. You have all you need in your pocket (if you don’t have a smart phone, get someone on board who does - they can be the camera operator). Get some pals together who like acting, or like fooling around and just shoot something.

You don’t need fancy equipment, just a good story and some enthusiasm. I would also recommend watching a load of films and trying to figure out where they put the camera or how they made the scene exciting or sad. Watch loads of films! And not just action movies with Tom Cruise in. Watch some classics on Netflix. Google “best films of all time” or “best cult movies” and start watching them. Borrow movies from the library if you don’t have Netflix (there’s even tons of free movies on youtube). There are also loads of websites or youtube channels that give you all the tutorials on lighting, or camera lenses, or editing. All for free. Film is also an industry you can enter without qualifications. You start as a runner and learn the ropes and then move up. There are Facebook groups that advertise when runners are needed. In film making you learn by doing. Go do it!

For further information: www.bonniebr-ae.co.uk

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MEET THE DIRECTOR

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT August: Osage County is about a family that gets thrown back together, quite a large family that gets thrown back together after an event and it’s what happens when I suppose you throw this dysfunctional family back into the house that they grew up in along with new partners, kids. What happens when you push them all back together and that sense of claustrophobia and lots of things come out of the woodwork.

I think the original Steppenwolf production in 2007 had such a massive impact on me in terms of seeing a brand new piece of work that already felt like a classic and it was the style of writing that I loved, it’s very naturalistic and coming from a big family myself a lot of the things, not the more severe things in the family but just the sense of family really resonated with me. It felt like a really important story about America, about the world and using this story of a family as a metaphor for that.

For my first show at Dundee Rep with the Ensemble I wanted a piece that was very much about ensemble theatre. And because Steppenwolf is one of the most successful and most famous ensemble theatres in the world I wanted it to be very much about the Ensemble and it’s a really big cast so we’ve got the Ensemble plus 5 guest actors in the company so 13 in total which is great. It’s really amazing to have that many actors on stage telling the story. For my first show at the Rep I wanted it to be about that, about the actors and about just great storytelling.

I think the great thing about August: Osage County is that it is, at moments it’s really harrowing and also at other moments it’s laugh out loud hilarious so I think the audience coming can expect to go on a little bit of an emotional rollercoaster with this one. It isn’t a thriller but certainly you really don’t know what’s around the next corner that’s what’s exciting about it I hope.

It’s interesting that August: Osage County is about family because coming to Dundee Rep and working with the Ensemble and all the various different departments does feel like joining a really DUNDEE REP

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big family. So how am I feeling right now? I’m feeling very excited about the show. It really is a tremendous cast, I mean it’s just like watching acting masterclasses every day in rehearsals so as a director it’s a really rewarding experience to be able to collaborate with artists working at that level.

The only professional production of this play in the UK was at the National Theatre in 2008 and that was the original Steppenwolf Company that transferred to Broadway and then came to the National Theatre of Great Britain for a limited season. So it’s incredibly exciting and a great honour that this will actually be the first UK cast to produce it, so the Scottish Premiere and the first time that a UK cast has put it on professionally in this country so with that comes a real responsibility to Tracy Letts and I’m hoping that we will fulfil that responsibility.

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MEET THE CAST

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT Emily Winter: My name is Emily Winter and I’m playing Barbara who is the eldest daughter of the family and I’m not going to tell you anything more about that because I think you have to come and see the play! But what I will tell you is that this is an amazing play. It’s brilliantly written. It’s about a dysfunctional family who are put into some quite extreme situations and because of this it means that they go to some very dark places.

Ann Louise Ross: Hello my name is Ann Louise Ross and I’m playing Violet. It’s difficult to say too much without giving the story away but the family all return to the house because of something that’s happened and it’s about a dysfunctional family so it makes it much more interesting as a result of that. It tracks the family over the space of a week to two weeks in this house, in Oklahoma, in August, so it’s extremely hot outside, it’s extremely hot inside so there is a temperature about the whole thing.

Emma Mullen: I’m Emma, I’m one of the new Graduate actors at Dundee Rep and I’m playing Jean who is the baby of the family, she’s 14 years old, she acts a lot older than her years. She comes along to the house with her Mum and this is the summer before she goes to High School so it’s kind of a funny time for her. The play is basically about a massive family and I’m the grandchild who gets dragged along to this madhouse.

Lewis Howden: I am Lewis Howden and I’m playing Bill Fordham who is the husband of Barbara, the eldest daughter. He’s a University Lecturer working in Boulder, Colorado, so he’s taken his family away from Oklahoma a few years back. Barbara and him are having issues at the minute and they’re having to come back to Barbara’s family home because of this crisis that’s happening.

Liam Brennan: I’m playing a character called Steve. I’m one of, well I suppose there’s another kind of outsider character, but I am the fiancée of one of the daughters of the family. He’s a bit dodgy, let’s say.

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EW: What’s really fantastic about it and what’s really clever is that even at its darkest it’s really, really funny, it’s hilarious and that’s what’s really clever about the writing and I think that Tracy Letts who is the Author manages to achieve that because he just makes the characters so human, so real. I think there’s an autobiographical element to the writing and because of that you know these people, they are your family, they are your friends or yourself and because of that you feel such empathy for them in these awful situations that they find themselves in.

LB: Some of the things that go on with these characters are pretty extreme but there are still a lot of just little niggly, sibling, mother, daughter, father, son things that anybody can relate to, if not the more extreme things that happen in the piece.

AR: It’s an amazing script, every single character from the bigger ones to the smaller ones are so well drawn, so interesting to play.

EW: It’s just such fun because you’ve got so many different energies in the room and also we’ve got the rehearsal room set up with all the furniture of all the different rooms so it feels like you walk into your house in the morning and you’re getting used to what the kitchen is like and what the living room is like and then it’s just lovely because of the nature of this play and because it’s so naturalistic. I mean it does become heightened as well but you’ve got all these relationships between your sisters and your mother and your father and your husband and so they’re all crashing against each other in this space and it’s just wonderful.

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MEET THE DESIGNER How did you begin the process of designing the set and costumes for August: Osage County?

August: Osage County is unusual in that the text has a very prescriptive architecture, in many ways it has the most specific stage architecture of any play I’ve designed. It accounts for where people are situated in the house at any given moment. It feels as though it is written with a very specific house in mind personal to the playwright. I began by plotting exactly who was where and when and then how each of those characters move through the rooms of the house as the play progresses. Once I had that info I was able to start working out a ground plan of the house and working out where the rooms would sit in relation to one another. I wanted it to have a real footprint of a house rather than an imagined stage reality that had no real integrity or logic. The play is so visceral and real I wanted the actors to feel as though they were occupying real rooms with a real architecture.

In what way did the themes within the play influence your design?

The play centres on a near empty house, which during the course of the play slowly fills with a family only to then have them all leave. Through all being tightly compressed together in the house a series of explosive family revelations and truths are exposed. The idea was for a house that in different aspects would expose different elements. As the house slowly turns, new perspectives appear until eventually all angles are exposed, nothing remains hidden, in some ways echoing the journey of each of the characters in the play as the family secrets are disclosed.

What is your favourite part of the design process?

It’s always bizarre to see something that has only existed in miniature model form manifest into something much larger. And to be populated with real people. It’s always something I look forward to and a moment where you and your performers make new discoveries about the space you have created.

What advice would you give a young person who aspires to be a set and/or costume designer?

Persevere ... and see as much work as you can, particularly work outside of the UK if you have the opportunity. To immerse yourself in all visual arts, not just theatre. I think that way you experience a wider range of what performance art can be. These other disciplines will make your work as a designer richer.

For further information: www.alexlowde.com

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THE MODEL BOX

Photos: Sean Millar

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MEET THE LIGHTING DESIGNER How did you approach the lighting design for August: Osage County?

Alex Lowde’s fantastic design is very sculptural and minimal. He and Andrew were keen for the audience to see the whole house at times as a cross lit beautiful structure and at times have a very focussed reality.

As the house revolves I thought we needed an element of lighting that would travel with the rooms to help locate the various rooms so there are troughs in the ceilings of each room with birdies, a very small lamp, set into the ceiling. Also the heat and claustrophobic atmosphere is a huge element.

What role does lighting play in conveying the story to the audience?

I hope the audience get a sense of heat filtering through the house and what time of day it is plus a heightened reality at times when the emotional heat is turned up during the story.

What challenges did you face in designing the lighting for this production?

A moving structure on two levels with ceilings is quite a challenge but I loved the design and knew it would be a stunning set to light.

What advice would you give a young person who aspires to be a lighting designer?

There are a lot of great lighting design courses. The drama schools who have design courses are part of the Conference of Drama Schools which you can Google. A design course is just the beginning. I think to be a great designer you have to love theatre, storytelling and be a great team player before loving lights. I spend far more time trying to understand a piece of theatre, the designer and directors style for the piece, getting under the skin of the piece, then the practicality of the lighting design should quite easily fall into place if you’ve done your homework. I also think that working as a theatre electrician in all its forms is an invaluable foundation for understanding the practicality of lighting design.

For further information: www.chrisdaveylx.com

Photo: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

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MEET THE COMPOSER How did you begin composing the music for August: Osage County?

The process began, as it usually does, with a conversation between me and the director, in this case Andrew Panton. Inspired by our reading of the play we compared reference points for the soundtrack as well as discussing the role of music in the overall production. In August: Osage County it became clear that supporting the transitions between scenes would be a significant part of the job.

What role does your sound design play in telling the story?

There are some very practical aspects to the sound design in August: Osage County, specifically in terms of setting, location and time of day by use of atmospheric recordings of the singing insects of Oklahoma (mostly cicadas, sourced online!). Beyond that there are little practical touches, like the two record player moments and Steve’s mobile ringtone.

What has been your favourite part of working on this production?

Developing some new working relationships, specifically with Andrew as Director and Jamie Ford, newly in post as Sound Technician at the Rep. Also watching the cast at work. They’re a tremendously talented company and clearly relished the challenge of the play.

What advice would you give a young person who aspires to be a composer/sound designer?

Try to take as many opportunities as you can to see work of all kinds - theatre, dance; concerts.

And don’t be afraid of accepting offers to make new work, even or especially if it’s something you haven’t tried to do before.

For further information: www.michaeljohnmccarthy.com

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO SOME SOUND CLIPS

Photo: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

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PRESS PREVIEWS The Courier 1 Sep 2017 Dawn Geddes

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The Herald 29 Aug 2017 Neil Cooper

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The Courier 18 Jul 2017

Evening Telegraph 23 Aug 2017

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Evening Telegraph 30 Aug 2017

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PRESS REVIEWS The Herald 6 Sep 2017 Neil Cooper

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Theatre review: August: Osage County, Dundee Rep Neil Cooper EVERYONE is on different drugs in Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize winning American epic, which receives its Scottish premiere in new Dundee Rep artistic director Andrew Panton’s revival, a decade after it first appeared on Broadway and the West End. It’s not just the booze and pills that the ageing heads of the Weston clan Beverley and Violet cling to for comfort that makes communication between them so impossible. It’s the assorted emotional crutches their three daughters, Barbara, Ivy and Karen alongside their extended family hold on to for dear life that leaves everyone so desperately isolated from each other.

The Westons are reunited on Alex Lowde’s revolving open plan set after Beverley disappears shortly after hiring young Native American woman Johnna to keep house and look after an increasingly delirious Violet. What follows over almost three and a half hours is a slow burning tragi-comic explosion of collective dysfunction, with all its secrets, lies, failures and flaws exposed.

Led by a magnificent pairing of Ann Louise Ross as Violet and Emily Winter as Barbara, every one of the thirteen actors onstage is heroic in putting flesh on Letts’ frequently wise-cracking script. There may be much talk of struggle, but it is the serenity and quiet strength of Betty Valencia’s Johnna who becomes the play’s moral heart.

On one level, Letts is laying bare the monstrous and monumental mess of family life by way of a series of increasingly extreme revelations. On another, it’s a microcosm, not just of a country in free-fall, but an entire system in which a basic capacity for love has been broken by corrupted western values.

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The Times 2 Sep 2017 Alan Radcliffe

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August: Osage County at Dundee Rep The play is unremittingly bleak yet the script is so funny, so beautifully constructed and gripping that the running time zips by Allan Radcliffe - FIRST NIGHT REVIEW Ann Louise Ross is formidable as Violet Weston and brilliantly supported by her three differently messed-up daughters

In this era of 90-minute plays, a three-and-a-half hour drama feels like a real theatrical banquet.

August: Osage County, Tracy Letts’s award-winning play, which made its Broadway debut in 2008, features all the bristling dialogue and steady ratcheting-up of tension to be found in great American stage works such as Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Yet Letts’s family saga, with its large cast of dysfunctional characters and multiple plot strands, twists and revelations, is also unapologetically entertaining, like a soap opera speeded up.

To all intents and purposes, the play opens where O’Neill’s masterpiece leaves off: with a drug-addled matriarch stumbling around her own house. Unlike Mary Tyrone, however, Violet Weston (played in Andrew Panton’s production for Dundee Rep by Ann Louise Ross) is brazen about her addiction to pills of all colours.

Incoherent and rambling under the influence, she veers between malevolence and self-pity when lucid.

“My wife is cold-blooded and not just in the metaphorical sense,” says her husband, the gentle, alcoholic Beverly (John Buick), in the opening monologue, wryly pointing out the poetic justice of this acid-tongued woman’s recent course of treatment for mouth cancer.

Beverly’s disappearance and the discovery of his body are the catalysts for a fraught family reunion, which brings the Westons’ three daughters and their associated spouses, children and hangers-on back into the fold. In a play that is, partially at least, a comment on the essentially solitary nature of existence, Panton and his cast do a fine job of navigating the play’s assortment of slow-burning ensemble scenes and more intimate sequences. Alex Lowde’s vast, revolving set — a house with the walls cut away — allows us to glimpse the characters in their private moments, divested of battle armour.

Set pieces, notably the horrendous funeral dinner that culminates in violence, are impressively choreographed. Yet while much of this noisy family’s grief and rage simmers uncomfortably close to the surface (several characters cry “I’m in pain!” at points), some of the tensions Letts depicts, notably the way the Westons tiptoe around their composed Native American housekeeper, Johnna (Betty Valencia), are treated with wry understatement.

The play is unremittingly bleak. Even the more sympathetic members of the clan are cruelly denied happiness. Yet the script is so funny, so beautifully constructed and gripping that the running time zips by.

Ross is formidable as the head of the caustic household, pathetic one moment, hateful the next, and she receives brilliant support from the rest of the ensemble, notably Emily Winter, Beth Marshall and Angela Darcy as her three very differently messed-up daughters.

Box office: 01382 223530, to Sept 16

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The Stage 1 Sep 2017 Thom Dibdin

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August: Osage County review at Dundee Rep – ‘magnificently staged’ The cast of August: Orange County at Dundee Repertory Theatre. Photo: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

by Thom Dibdin - Sep 1, 2017

Dysfunction permeates the revolving house at the centre of Dundee Rep’s magnificent staging of Tracy Letts’ modern American tragedy, August: Osage County.

At first it seems that Alex Lowde’s skeletal design is over-elaborate: blocking sight-lines and creaking on its journey. But as it turns and turns to reveal the variously delusional, arrogant and self-obsessed family members surrounding matriarch Violet Weston, it starts to make sense.

Ann Louise Ross is utterly compelling as Violet, addled by prescription drugs and at turns tottering about in drug-induced haze or tongue-lashing her children with coruscating put-downs and stupefying revelations.

The way she turns the screw in her vicious manipulations is compelling and completely believable. The three daughters, Emily Winter’s much-loved Barbara, Beth Marshall’s faithful Ivy and Angela Darcy’s head-in-theclouds Karen, add spice to what could be mundane - their performances assaying Violet’s character as much their own.

Director Andrew Panton handles his 13-strong cast with real authority, playing to the strengths of Letts’ play and giving each actor enough space to colour their influence on events. The exposition is unhurried, firmly bedded-in and allowed to grow into something solid and uncompromising.

The production might well have failed to transcend the tropes of family drama were not for the presence of Betty Valencia as Johanna Monevata, the Native American nurse hired by Violet’s husband. Valencia is a constant, doing just enough to ensure she is visible in the background; she adds a prickling reminder that this is an America in decline, separated from its birthright, wandering without purpose or clear design.

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The Courier 2 Sep 2017 Joyce McMillan

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The set is huge: too huge, really, a giant rotating thing that creaks and groans and features dozens of wooden posts that sometimes obscure the actors’ faces. What it conveys, though, is something central to Tracy Letts’s award-winning 2007 drama August: Osage County, now receiving its Scottish premiere at Dundee Rep, as the opening production of Andrew Panton’s first season as artistic director.

The play revolves –in this case literally – around the idea of home, as a place of refuge to which people return in times of stress; the set represents the home of the Weston family, somewhere on the plains of Michigan, in a baking hot August.

Yet the point of Letts’s ruthless, no holds barred family drama – a three and a half hour big-cast epic written for his own Steppenwolf Ensemble in Chicago, and now embraced with joy by the Dundee Rep Ensemble – is to suggest that for many people, the family is no such thing; at best a pretence of the values it is supposed to embody, and at worst an appalling, sometimes hilarious monster, that reproduces emotional violence down the generations.

The emotional epicentre of the story lies with Violet, the fierce, unforgiving, sharp-witted, heavily pill-addicted, and often terrifyingly aggressive mother and grandmother, brilliantly played here by Ann Louise Ross.

Obsessed with the hardships her generation endured during their 1930s childhood, and savagely unimpressed with her own three 40-something daughters, Violet trusts only her younger sister Mattie Fae, who understands where she comes from; and when Violet’s husband Beverly disappears, and the clan gathers to deal with the crisis, it gradually becomes clear that some family ties have to be broken, in order to avoid devastating damage.

Panton’s production – beautifully lit by Chris Davey, with a fine score by Michael John McCarthy – features a tremendous ensemble performance from the Rep company, with additional artists; there’s fine work from Irene Macdougall as Mattie Fae, Emily Winter as eldest daughter Barbara, and Liam Brennan as middle daughter Karen’s sleazy new boyfriend, among many others.

And in an age when politicians are still inclined to talk piously of “the family” as a universal positive, Letts’s powerful, resonant play comes as a salutary reminder that things are not so straightforward; and that even on the great plains of America, where life was once a simple matter of survival, blood is not always thicker than water, and often – in the end – much less useful.

JOYCE MCMILLAN Until 16 September

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The Sunday Herald 10 Sep 2017 Mark Brown

Theatre: Scintillating triumph in a house of demons Mark Brown

August: Osage County Dundee Rep ANDREW Panton, newly appointed artistic director at Dundee Rep, has chosen a big, challenging drama with which to make his debut. American writer Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County, which had its world premiere at the famous Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago a decade ago, has been richly awarded (with a Pulitzer and a Tony, among many others). In 2013, filmmaker John Wells collaborated with Letts on a successful screen version, starring President Trump’s bête noire Meryl Streep.

Panton’s production marks the Scottish premiere of the play. It is, glad to report, a scintillating triumph.

Alcoholic poet Beverly Weston takes on a live-in housekeeper (a young, native American woman) to care for his prescription drug-addicted wife Violet. He then promptly disappears. The ensuing drama is like 1970s American TV series The Waltons being gatecrashed by Edward Albee’s classic 1962 play Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf.

A superb, 13-strong ensemble gives powerful expression to both Letts’s bleak comedy and the resounding humanism that underlies it. Ann Louise Ross, in particular, is memorably anguished, desperate and vindictive in the crucial role of Violet.

Designer Alex Lowde’s set, which is comprised of an entire, transparent, two-storey house, complete with loft room, on a massive stage revolve, is an extraordinary achievement. It allows the audience to see into every room, following the various characters as they confront each other and their demons, or seek refuge from the darkly humorous chaos engulfing the household.

The production (which boasts typically assured accent work by voice coach Ros Steen) delves deep into the guts of the play. As it does so, it achieves both a recognisable family drama (not least in the relations between the Westons’ three grown-up daughters) and a resonating, metaphorical portrait of the “hubris” of the United States as a national and imperial project.

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The Courier 2 Sep 2017 Dawn Geddes

Gather all the members of any family together in one house and there’s bound to be friction. Turn up the heat a notch or two and there may even be fireworks.

Explosive is the perfect description of the Weston family’s reunion in Dundee Rep’s production of Tracy Letts’ epic play, August: Osage County.

It is the first time that the dark comedic show has ever been performed on a Scottish stage or by a UK cast, making it an ambitious debut project for new Artistic Director, Andrew Panton.

Set during a blistering hot summer in Oklahoma the play centres around acid tongued Violet Weston, played by Ann Louise Ross, whose alcoholic husband Beverly, played by John Buick, has mysteriously gone missing. When her sister and three daughters flock to her side, along with their respective broods, it’s only a matter of time before home truths are aired and family secrets and lies are uncovered.

Filled with sharp witty dialogue, this mesmerising play is dripping with a glorious black humour that had the audience roaring with laughter. While the male actors do a fantastic job, it is the women that absolutely steal the show. Angela Darcy is hilarious as the delightfully dippy Karen, Beth Marshall, sympathetic as Ivy and Emily Winter is captivating as eldest sister Barbara, who is struggling not become her mother’s daughter.

But it is Ross who makes this production with her electrifying portrayal of the feisty, foul-mouthed, terrifying head of the family.

With all the play’s tragedy and drama unfolding within the family home, it’s only right that the Weston’s country estate should be a character in its own right. The impressive, revolving set helps build on the already tense and claustrophobic atmosphere that’s been skilfully created by Dundee Rep Ensemble.

Intense, deeply moving and hysterically funny, August: Osage County is a tremendously powerful production that packs a hell of a punch. Miss it at your peril.

August: Osage County runs at Dundee Rep until September 16

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The List 4 Sep 2017 Lorna Irvine

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August: Osage County is a complex and female-centred, dysfunctional family drama Lorna Irvine 4 September 2017

Andrew Panton’s perceptive new adaptation marks the 10th anniversary of the play’s first production Andrew Panton’s first production as Dundee Rep Theatre’s Artistic Director brings Southern fried cliches to their knees. His perceptive direction, focused on the fallout from a missing patriarch hits all of its targets.

The creaking, rotating skeletal frame of the pine Oklahoma homestead, created by Alex Lowde, functions as a brilliant visual metaphor for a family thrown off balance.

Drug addicted matriarch Violet Weston (Ann Louise Ross) has been left to pick up the pieces, and rules over her returning family members with claw like hands. Ross is superb, sympathetic in spite of her many flaws and uncensored words.

There’s strong support, too, from Barrie Hunter as Violet’s sensitive, troubled brother-in-law Charlie, and Irene MacDougall as his embittered wife Mattie. But the production belongs to the trio of sisters, dealing with their father’s absence: Emily Winter as neurotic Barbara, Angela Darcy’s deluded, vulnerable Karen and headstrong, rebellious Ivy (Beth Marshall).

Tracy Letts’ writing may bear comparison with the Bourbon-soaked resentment of Tennessee Williams, but it really seems to have more in common with the blunt instruments hurled as missiles by Raymond Carver.

Brutal, hilarious and heart-rending, it’s a compelling parable about the American Dream, now curdled.

Dundee Rep Theatre, 29 Aug--16 Sep, 7pm, £12--£25.

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For further information about our Education projects and resources, please contact Heather Cassidy (Education and Pathways Associate) on 01382 342 660 or email hcassidy@dundeereptheatre.co.uk

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Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre Limited is a Registered Company No: SC021201 Scottish Charity Registered No: SC017315 - Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre Limited gratefully acknowledges support from: