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- Perry Tannenbaum
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BUILDING STORIES: Director Michael Simmons on the set of August: Osage County
At their new home in NoDa, CAST is precisely delineating the difference between an opening and a GRAND OPENING. Back in June, when the new HQ at 2424 N. Davidson St. had its soft opening, CAST brought a wee mobile home into one of their theaters — oh yes, there are still two — and outfitted it with a bed, a kitchenette and a TV. Now for the grand opening of their 2011-12 season, CAST is staging the Metrolina premiere of Tracy Letts' August: Osage County (happening Aug. 25-Sept. 24). The TV is a mere speck amid a massive three-story house with multiple bedrooms, a dining room, a porch and — somewhere behind the imposing façade — a kitchen where a resourceful housekeeper can cook up a handsome family feast.
Artistic director Michael Simmons and his son Robert won a CL Theater Award for set design in 2009 when CAST produced a comparable prodigy, the waterworld of Metamorphoses, at their previous Plaza Midwood location. Not this time, when actors are 25 feet off the ground. Osage set designer Dee Blackburn sports an architectural degree among her credentials.
Letts has fashioned an imposing edifice of his own. The cornerstone of this story is Violet, matriarch of the Westons. Married to an acclaimed poet whose young promise was never fulfilled, and suffering hideously from mouth cancer after a lifetime of chain-smoking, Violet (portrayed by the venerable Polly Adkins) responds with flamboyant defiance. She's still chain-smoking, washing away the pain with a river of booze and pills. As the family gathers around her, more layers of ancient animosities and forbidden intimacies bubble to the surface.
It takes three stories — and three full acts — to play out the devious, intricate plot of this Pulitzer Prize/Tony Award winner. Nastiness and heated passions are plentiful as the action unfolds, but there are seismic forces lurking below. Shock follows shock as long-buried secrets — and who knows them — are revealed.
Directing Osage, Michael Simmons hasn't found any fluff in this epic script, asserting that two intermissions are needed for us to digest all that we've seen and anticipate what's to come. But when he first read it, he thought Osage was hilarious. Amid the flying insults and crockery, Simmons is working to keep the comedy alive.
"There is a lot of humor in here," he insists. "Granted, it's dark humor and you don't want to laugh at it. But we all know people like this — everybody somewhere in their family has a [carping] Aunt Mattie Faye, everybody somewhere has a [nebbishy] Little Charles, every family has a family secret. We embrace that. So I think you're going to find a good cinematic balance of the humor and the tragedy."
Ah, but as Charlotte's prime exponent of experiential theater, there's always an extra question for Simmons to answer. What theme will CAST paint, plaster and construct outside in their lobby and box office areas to complement the performance within?
Well, for a truly grand opening, multiple answers are in order.
Reconnoitering the site last Saturday, I found a mural-sized painting of the Weston homestead nearing completion. Facing the doorway to the 28th Street mall, another wall-sized painting of the Great Plains was taking shape. Box office theming is taking a wholly different tack, one that I found totally in character for a company that has issued fake driver's licenses and turtles in lieu of conventional tickets.
During his research, Simmons discovered that Osage County is the largest county in Oklahoma, chiefly because it lies entirely within a huge Indian reservation, home of the Osage Nation. So art director Elizabeth Shanks will evoke Native American culture by creating a set of spidery dreamcatchers to adorn a wall — with a CAST twist.
"We'll have dreamcatchers with poetry books, dreamcatchers with pill bottles, dreamcatchers with windows — a lot of the themes that keep coming up in the play."
Popcorn, candy and beer, all for sale in the lobby, complete the experiential lineup.
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Calendar
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Robots, Rockets, & Rovers @ The Schiele Museum of Natural History and Planetarium
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Double Trouble Improv Comedy Night @ CATCh
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ANNIE LEIBOVITZ / WORK @ Mint Museum Uptown at Levine Center for the Arts
- Tuesdays-Sundays, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Continues through Aug. 31
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Summer arts camps @ McDowell Arts Center
- Mondays-Fridays, 12:30-4 p.m. Continues through Aug. 23
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Plein Air Pineville @ President James K. Polk State Historic Site
- Wed., June 18, 10-11 a.m.
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