Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...with this staggeringly ambitious -- and, for my money, staggeringly successful -- three-act domestic opus for the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Letts has penned a major, not-to-be-missed new American work that eulogizes the perversely nurturing dysfunction of family life on the Plains as surely as it skewers the arid absurdities of its underpinning."
Chicago Sun Times - Recommended
"...Letts is a keen observer of the way the past oozes into the present and future. And while each of his characters has a vivid identity, each also has a dozen richly contradictory aspects to his or her nature, played in the full richness of their colors by the Steppenwolf actors. The playwright also serves up some blackly comic laughs, too, just to clear the air from time to time."
Daily Herald - Highly Recommended
"...Whether the Westons join the Tyrones, Lomans and Big Daddy's brood as one of America's archetypal fractured families remains to be seen. But Letts' impressive play has earned a place in the American canon."
SouthtownStar - Highly Recommended
"...Not only does Lett's writing mark this work as a new masterpiece of American drama, but the Steppenwolf ensemble has never been better. From Dunagan's monumental portrayal to Rondi Reed's extraordinary tirades to Jeff Perry's anguish -- this is a cast made in heaven."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Heartbreaking, hilarious, gruffly compassionate, and breathtakingly bold in its thematic scope, Tracy Lett's drama about a monumentally screwed-up clan in rural Oklahoma is one of the best American plays of the last decade."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...Deanna Dunagan delivers a blistering portrayal of a mother to make The Beauty Queen of Leenane’s mom look like June Cleaver, flanked by Rondi Reed as her vulgar sister and Amy Morton as the daughter in danger of inflicting the inhumanity on another generation."
EpochTimes - Highly Recommended
"...as a Chicago theater-goer, one thing you can count on is- Amy Morton, Deanna Dunagan, Rondi Reed, Jeff Perry, Francis Guinan, Rick Snyder- what else would you like to make your theater experience wonderful? Add in a play written by Letts and directed by Shapiro and you know it is time to order your tickets."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...The ensemble is so fine and so large that listing them is less economical than singling out casting director Erica Daniels—her work, especially in appropriating Letts’s born-loser men, is like cold fusion—and director Shapiro. In the past, Shapiro’s sterling work has contained a certain degree of flash. Here she’s close to invisible. (A shocking, postfuneral dinner scene—with 11 guests—is her Ben-Hur chariot race.)"
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...You’d be hard pressed to witness a finer, more complete drama with realistic and humanly flawed characters than August: Osage County. This drama reminds us that it is almost impossible to escape from one’s family, especially from a Midwest family. Don’t miss this marvelous epic. August: Osage County is as good as theatre gets."
