By Mark Shenton
June 20, 2008
It has been confirmed that the National Theatre will present the London debut of this year's Tony Award-winning Best Play, Tracy Letts' August: Osage County.The Steppenwolf Theatre Company production will begin an eight-week run in the Lyttelton Theatre in late November (with precise dates still to be confirmed). Most of the original Broadway cast will likely reprise their performances in London.
Steppenwolf previously appeared at the National Theatre in 1989, when they transferred their stage adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath from Chicago to London, ahead of a Broadway run the year after.
Playwright Letts won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the three-and-a-half-hour dark ensemble comedy-drama about three generations of an Oklahoma clan. The Broadway production also picked up five 2008 Tony Awards, including one for Best Play.
Directed by Anna D. Shapiro, August: Osage County "tells the explosively funny tale of the Weston clan, triggered by the recent disappearance of the family patriarch."
The designers are Todd Rosenthal (sets), Ana Kuzmanic (costumes), Ann G. Wrightson (lights), Richard Woodbury (sound) and David Singer (original music).
In New York August plays the Music Box Theatre.
Currently reading: Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard by Isak Dinesen
