The announcement that Phylicia Rashad would take over the lead role of Violet Weston in the Broadway production of August: Osage County, currently at the Music Box Theater, was initially met with a great deal of skepticism. Not only is she the only African-American actress cast member within this naturalistic family drama, but her well known television persona as the kindhearted Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show is the diametric opposite of the acerbic family matriarch of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play. However, Rashad more than rises to the challenge of this demanding role, turning in a complex and riveting performance from start to finish.

There may be some momentary adjustmen[...]

The original Broadway cast of Tracy Letts' multiple award-winning drama, August: Osage County, was such a tight ensemble, that it was difficult to imagine anyone else portraying those roles. However, the production's new cast members -- which include Estelle Parsons, Molly Regan, Robert Foxworth, Jim True-Frost, and Frank Wood -- acquit themselves well, contributing to an excellent production that sends the audience on an emotional roller coaster ride which ends far more quickly than its nearly three-and-a-half-hour running time would suggest. The play is also now ensconced in the Music Box Theater, which has a more intimate feel to it than the Imperial, where the show made its original Bro[...]

Clocking in at three hours and twenty minutes, Tracy Letts' superb new play, August: Osage County, is not exactly a light evening in the theater. It is, however, richly rewarding. Steppenwolf Theatre Company has assembled an excellent ensemble cast -- nearly all of whom originated their roles in the work's acclaimed Chicago run -- under the sharp and incisive direction of Anna D. Shapiro.

Following the disappearance of patriarch Beverly Weston (Dennis Letts), his relatives descend upon the family household in rural Oklahoma to see each other through this crisis, re-opening old wounds or gouging out new ones in the process. Beverly's wife Violet (Deanna Dunagan) would be in charge if it wer[...]