IT’S good to be home! A year and a half after it opened on Broadway, Tracy Letts’ family epic “August: Osage County” remains thrilling, theatrical nitroglycerin.
Tracked over 3½ quick hours, the unraveling of Oklahoma’s Weston clan is the punchiest domestic drama in town, and I don’t care what those “God of Carnage” upstarts have to say.
Even better, a major cast change reveals that the play is strong enough to leave actors interpretative wriggle room.
At first glance, hiring the stately, composed, African-American Phylicia Rashad to play the pill-popping, spiteful matriarch of a white family smacks of stunt casting.
It’s remarkably easy, however, to overlook the racial discrepancy. Audiences have bought far worse propositions over the years. (Yes, Ted Neeley is still touring in “Jesus Christ Superstar” — at 65.)
Wisely, Rashad doesn’t try to emulate the speed-freak intensity of Deanna Dunagan’s Tony-winning turn as Violet. Her take is more vulnerable, more pitiful. At times you think this mom is more concerned with correcting breaches of etiquette than inflicting psychic wounds.
But Rashad stops short of making Violet sympathetic. She spreads toxicity slowly but surely, like oil leaking out of a fractured tanker — whereas Dunagan spat out nihilistic poison in pyrotechnic displays. I personally preferred the over-the-top, operatic viciousness of Dunagan’s Vi, but Rashad’s slurred intimations make a compelling case for the play’s depths.
This approach also nicely complicates the relationship between Vi and her eldest daughter, Barbara — especially because Barbara is played by the sensational Amy Morton, who can simultaneously make you laugh and break your heart.
When Barbara roars up to take control over her mother, it feels almost like overkill against mentally deranged Vi. When she did it against Dunagan, you wanted to stand and cheer.
Rashad and Morton are bolstered by a superb ensemble. Original cast members Sally Murphy and Mariann Mayberry continue to be touchingly dislocated as Barbara’s sisters, while relative newcomers John Cullum (the patriarch Beverly) and Elizabeth Ashley (a cross between Rue McClanahan and Harvey Fierstein as aunt Mattie Fae) are so slyly good, it’s as if they’ve always been part of the furniture.
Together, they all make “August” Broadway’s most gripping dysfunction junction.
elisabeth.vincentelli@nypost.com
AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY
The Music Box, 239 W. 45th St.; 212-239-6200.