August: Osage County

The Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tracy Letts has been proclaimed ''the most exciting new play Broadway has seen in the last few years'', as well as ''a stunning creation'' that can stand alongside the ''great American family dramas''. Perhaps the sensation-prone US critics did not overdo it this time, because there is something in ''August: Osage County'' which we do not encounter in plays often: a well-crafted play that combines O'Neill with humour, cinically witty and shockingly sad, placed somewhere between (dark) comedy and melodrama, with such well written, ''juicy'' characters any actor would only wish for playing. Letts shows us tenderness and cruelty as the two sides of intimacy while the unforgettable characters keep lining up, bathed in neuroses, alcohol, pills, hysteria, desolation, the desire to escape... ''Life is very long'', a quote by T.S. Eliot, is merely a slightly opened window of one family's disfunctionality, where women are those who fight and men are the ''weaker sex''. Directed by Slađana Kilibarda, ''August: Osage County'' should primarily be a story about what we are prepared to do (to ourselves) when we do not know how to love...

Awards:
''Gavella Fair'', 2015 - Best actor in season's premieres 2014/2015: Anja Šovagović Despot

''An excellent opening night in Gavella which lasted almost three hours (...) a grand piece of work in which every actor precisely or brilliantly played the part. (...) The role of Violet Weston is the best one in Anja Šovagović Despot's career.'' (Tomislav Čadež, Jutarnji list)

''It is quite rare that Croatian actresses have the chance to show such range of despair and vulnerability as the one portrayed in August: Osage County by Anja Šovagović Despot. (...) Šovagović Despot plays a vigilante. A hardened fighter. Both mater familias and the fury. (...) Bojana Gregorić Vejzović, an actress who is getting more unconventional and confident in the acting risks she takes, portrays Violet's daughter Barbara and shows us the most difficult crumbling of one's own identity, which is remarkably graded, energetically precise and filled with tragic intesity.'' (Nataša Govedić, Novi list)
''Tracy Letts is both an actor and a playwright. He won a Pulitzer for August: Osage County. More important than the award is the fact that he is an author who knows how to write for the actors; who created a grand play full of strong roles, first and foremost female ones; a play any general manager of a theatre (especially a drama theatre) would like to have staged.'' (Bojana Radović, Večernji list)
''The text builds the tension on stage with precision. It is made of virtuoso dialogues which were fluently translated by Tomislav Kuzmanović, who preserved their greatest value - to indirectly and nuancedly, through speech, outline the characters and the temperament of the speaker. In order to create a grand performance from such an appealing material, one needs to have virtuoso acting performances like the ones all members of the August: Osage County have given.'' (Tomislav Kurelec, Kazalište.hr)
''...this is a very good humorous tragedy about family secrets, love and lack of understanding, with several excellent portrayals led by the very convincing Anja Šovagović Despot.'' (Igor Tretinjak, Vijenac)
''Gavella Theatre really does have the cast for this play, which is apparent in every scene so much so that the production itself is becoming a turning point in some actors' careers, while in the case of others their significance, both past and the future, is affirmed. (...) August: Osage County is a huge play that ought to be revisited.'' (Igor Ružić, Kulturpunkt.hr)
''Gavella's ensemble almost never fails, because this playhouse with the biggest charisma has an outstanding group of actors. Therefore Slađana Kilibarda could not have missed much in her casting, although she clearly had a distinct ''sense'' of which actor can give their maximum in a certain role and that is why the casting is perfect.'' (Elizabeta Hrstić, PolitikaPlus.com)