By JAMES D. WATTS JR. Scene Writer on Oct 15, 2012, at 11:48 AM Updated on 10/15 at 11:48 AM
ARTS
This has not, by any standard, been a good week for far too many people.
We've been horrifically reminded how fragile ...
Celebrity Attractions announced that Disney Theatricals will donate a portion of this week's ticket sales to the Tulsa run ...
Tulsa native Tracy Letts won the Outstanding Actor in a Play at the 58th annual Drama Desk Awards, presented Sunday night ...
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It seems that whatever role Tulsa native Tracy Letts has on Broadway, he makes of it a triumph.
The last time was in the 2007-2008 season, when Letts’ play “August: Osage County” debuted on the Great White Way, winning every major award possible and prompting some critics to call the play – now being filmed in Oklahoma – the greatest American play since Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
On Saturday, Letts was back on Broadway – this time as an actor, playing the role of George in Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
This production, which originated a couple of years ago at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, where Letts is one of the company artists, opened on the 50th anniversary of the play’s Broadway debut.
The New York Times review devotes the bulk of its space to praising Letts’ performance, calling it the “revelation” of the production, adding that he “brings a coiled ferocity to George that all but reorders our responses to a play that many of us probably thought had by now vouchsafed all its surprises.
“Stalking the stage like an animal ever on the verge of pouncing, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his cardigan -- as if only vigilant restraint could keep him from pummeling everyone in his orbit -- Mr. Letts's George sets the production's tone of incipient threat from the opening moments,” writes Christopher Isherwood. “Alternating simmering disquiet with bursts of spine-chilling viciousness, Mr. Letts's shlumpy but somehow magnetic George keeps stoking the suspense, moment by moment, for three harrowing and yet highly entertaining hours.”
The Associated Press echoes these sentiments, saying “Letts as George … is quick to anger and will happily grapple, but also will back down if need be. He’s playing a long game and Letts allows years of pain and frustration to seep out of a semi-broken man. It is simply a stunning performance, an actor at the top of his game.”
USA Today’s Elysa Gardner writes that “Letts delivers a performance as richly nuanced and ferociously entertaining as his (play ‘August: Osage County).”
She writes: “Though Martha (played by fellow Steppenwolf member Amy Morton) immediately establishes herself as the alpha figure in one of theater's most famously contentious marriages, the play derives its punch from the power struggle that develops, and the sense of interdependence that emerges, as George crawls out of his shell.
“Letts relays this dark-horse quality as powerfully as any performer this critic has seen in the role. From his masterfully acerbic rebuttals to Martha's initial barrage of insults, this George proves that he isn't the mere simp his wife describes but rather a simmering cauldron of frustration and disappointment. And he lets the lid off with an unmannered intensity that is as bracing as it is convincing.”
The Steppenwolf cast – Letts, Morton, Madison Dirks and Carrie Coon – originated this production in Dec. 2010, and after it completed its Chicago run moved to the Arena Stage in Washington D.C.
Morton also directed Letts as George in a 2004 production at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre.
And coincidentally, the last Broadway revival of Albee’s play, in 2005, also featured a former Tulsan in the role of George, when Bill Irwin was paired with Kathleen Turner.
To get a sense of Steppenwolf’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” here’s a video of select scenes from the original Steppenwolf production:
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