Thinking Big for American Theaters

By Charles Isherwood

There are not a lot of firm bets in the Tony races this year, but it’s pretty certain that Tracy Letts will need to make a little more room on his expanding awards shelf. Letts’s blistering family drama “August: Osage County” has already received several significant awards, notably the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle award. The top Tony, should it arrive on cue, will crown a remarkable season for Letts and his colleagues from the Steppenwolf Theater Company, the Chicago troupe that created this electrifying production.

Maybe more remarkable than the pileup of trophies is the show’s popularity with Broadway audiences. “August” became the rare commercial play on Broadway to recoup its investment by the season’s end. And it entered the field with a veritable litany of handicaps: no stars, a little-known playwright and a daunting running time of more than three hours. That’s in addition to the havoc wrought by the stagehands’ strike in the fall, which forced the postponement of the show’s opening. “August” connected with audiences as few contemporary plays manage to do, becoming the kind of event that the ever-uncertain, ever-underappreciated theater industry sorely needs. The popularity of “August” reveals a continuing hunger on the part of audiences for drama on a grand scale, the kind of big, broad, juicy plays that were once a staple of any Broadway season but that have become increasingly rare as the American theater has gone on a slimming diet for the last few decades.

Its nearly Shakespeare-size cast of 13 makes “August” a distinct anomaly today. The performers in most new plays produced at major American theaters could fit inside a Volkswagen Bug, along with the understudies and half the front row. The three-act, two- intermission structure of “August” is almost unheard of. Plays written when three acts were the norm are now usually redivided into two upon revival.

One reason I flipped for “August” was its superabundance of characters, of conflicts, of surprising revelations and savage jokes, of no-she-didn’t thrusts from its combative central character, the domineering mother played so unforgettably by Deanna Dunagan. It’s not just about bodies, or running time, but about dramatic scope, theatrical invention and sheer entertainment value. “August” is a big play in just about every way.

Intriguingly, should it win, “August” will become the third large- scale play in as many seasons to take home the top Tony award while appealing to wide audiences, suggesting that bigger often is better – or at least better liked. Last year Tom Stoppard’s three-part disquisition on 19th-century Russian thought and literature, “The Coast of Utopia,” both scored a hit with audiences and took the top Tony. The year before, the prize went to Alan Bennett’s “History Boys,” an expansive comedy-drama about a class of British schoolboys, which also proved to be an unexpected hit with audiences.

It is telling that both came from Britain, specifically from the National Theatre in London. Stoppard and Bennett have the luxury of writing for a robust industry that gets significant support from the government, despite recent cutbacks. Expense is not a consideration when their imaginations take fire.

The prospects for production are far different for American playwrights, writing for a constellation of not-for-profit theaters that are continually scrambling to raise funds as corporate giving dries up and subscribers drain away. Submit a drama with an ample cast to a regional theater’s literary department, and you’ll probably be asked to cut characters. Letts’s freedom to think big was surely a result of his status as a member of Steppenwolf, one of the few real theatrical troupes left of any size and stature.

It would be lovely if a megacorporation would step forward and establish, say, the Citibank Annual Fund for the Support of Secondary Characters in American Drama. But not likely, I fear. The problem needs important consideration. In the new century theater will have to compete ever more fiercely for public attention and public dollars. Entertainment options continue to proliferate, with ease of access being an increasing allurement.

The popularity of plays like “August: Osage County” suggests that big audiences are willing to put down the iPod if playwrights employ all the resources of the theater – its immediacy, intimacy and imaginative scope – to put forth stories that explore the panorama of human experience on a grand scale.

If the American theater is to remain an aesthetically robust enterprise, a vital step may be removing the invisible shackles from the imaginations of playwrights, making it natural – making it possible – for them to dream huge once again.

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

(c) 2008 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.