Deborah Hope as Violet and Elizabeth Marshall Black as Barbara in August: Osage County at Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.If you smell smoke near Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston near Main and Holman, don't be alarmed. It's only Dirt Dogs Theatre's production of Tracy Lett's, burning up the boards and blistering the paint. The combustion is phenomenal.
Hazy, boozy, or even momentarily clear-headed, Vivian is the star of this show, the absolute head of the family, the blazing white heat of a dying dynasty. Don't cross her or she'll slash you with a thousand cuts from her foul mouth. Hope is magnificent in this role of roles, clomping down the stairs in a drug-induced blur, tearing apart her daughters and relatives like a sadistic medieval torturer, or holding court at the dinner table like the most despotic tsar.
Beverly Weston is a failed poet, a lover of words and a greater lover of booze. He hires Johnna, a Cheyenne , as housekeeper and overseer of his drug-addled wife Violet . After this first scene, Beverly disappears, and his apparent suicide motivates his family to come together for the rest of the play.
The large cast is exemplary. If anyone can match Deborah Hope's malevolent Violet, it has to be Elizabeth Marshall Black as eldest daughter Barbara, who morphs into her mother without knowing it. She blazes, matching her mother's ferociousness and forked tongue. Husband Bill has taken a much younger lover and will not return to their bed. When old flame Sheriff Deon arrives to confirm Beverly's death, Barbara may have a second chance.