Performing Arts

NEW YORK – Maybe genius is knowing just how far you can go without going over the top.

Tracy Letts' August: Osage County has won every award on offer during the theatrical season now coming to an end, including the Pulitzer Prize, and seems destined to gather in the others in due course. The Oklahoma native, who spent a couple of years in Dallas in the early 1980s, launched his ambitious, 3 ½-hour drama at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. That version moved to Broadway late last year, and on Thursday the producers announced that they have already recouped their investment.

The wary could dismiss August: Osage County as a season of soap opera condensed into a single sitting, a raucous black comedy bursting with dirty words and even dirtier family secrets.

But Mr. Letts' play exudes too much raw, primal power to let you off the hook that easily. The constant parade of discoveries and revelations just hangs back from the brink of travesty. This may be the most dysfunctional family on record, but by the end of the evening it's my family and your family.

The hard-drinking patriarch (played by Michael McGuire) disappears shortly after hiring a housekeeper (Kimberly Guerrero) to take care of his pill-popping wife, Violet (Deanna Dunagan). The daughter who lives nearby (Sally Murphy) calls her far-flung sisters (Amy Morton and Mariann Mayberry) to help in the crisis. Violet's sister, Mattie Fae (Rondi Reed), drags in her smaller but equally troubled family.

What hits hardest in August: Osage County are the laughs. The family quarrels are as sardonic, and as literate, as those in Albee. The climactic family dinner becomes one disaster after another, and Mr. Letts definitely knows how to write a devastating punch line.

The production, directed by Anna D. Shapiro and reviewed Wednesday evening, vibrates with the typical Steppenwolf acting style: punchy and not overly concerned with subtleties. Ms. Morton has the largest role, Ms. Dunagan the showiest. Among many, many other things, August: Osage County is the story of a woman turning into her mother. As such, it's just as scary as Mr. Letts' off-Broadway paranoia-fest of a thriller, Bug. Only much, much funnier.

Music Box Theatre, 239 W. 45th St., New York. Runs 200 mins. $76.50 to $102.50. 1-800-432-7250, www.telecharge.com.

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