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Tracy Letts weekend in Oklahoma
Published: 10/6/2010 7:19 AM
Last Modified: 10/6/2010 7:19 AM

It’s not official, but this is Tracy Letts Weekend in the state’s two major cities.

Two theater groups – one in Tulsa, one in Oklahoma City – are performing two of Letts’ plays. The slightly odd aspect of this coincidental pairing is that the play being performed in Tulsa is set in Oklahoma City, while the Oklahoma City show is set in a place about 60 miles west of Tulsa.

Here in Tulsa, the Odeum Theatre Company is presenting its second weekend Letts’ play “Bug” at the Tulsa PAC, 110 E. Second St. It’s a superb production of this darkly funny and deeply disturbing play about two people whose lives are slowly spiraling out of control.

Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.

Down the turnpike, Oklahoma City Repertory Theater is staging Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning “August: Osage County.” This epic story of a Pawhuska family in crisis came to Tulsa earlier this year, when the Broadway touring production starring Estelle Parsons played at the PAC.

Performances are this weekend only, 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday at the Civic Center Music Hall in downtown Oklahoma City.

Tickets for both productions are available through calling 596-7111 or online at tulsaworld.com/mytix.

As for Letts himself, in an interview last week he said he was about to start rehearsals for Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” which opens Dec. 2 at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. He is co-starring with fellow Steppenwolf company member Amy Morton, who originated the role of Barbara in “August: Osage County,” earning a Tony Award nomination for her performance, and who directed Letts’ “Superior Donuts.”

Letts recently returned from Australia, where most of the original Steppenwolf cast of “August: Osage County” have reunited for a tour of Down Under.

“This is, I think, the final hurrah of the original Anna D. Shapiro production,” Letts said. “And I think that’s only right, because the play is now out there for regional companies to do.”

As for Parsons, who played the role of Violet Weston on Broadway and on tour, she’s gone on to London, where she is appearing as Helga ten Dorp in a new West End production of Ira Levin’s thriller “Deathtrap.”

It is a rather star-studded show, with Simon Russell Beale in the lead as a washed-up playwright, with Jonathan Groff (best known for his role on the TV series “Glee”) as a former student who has written play worth killing for.

Here's the trailer for the London production of "Deathtrap."




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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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