Deanna Dunagan and Rondi Reed will reprise their Tony Award-winning roles when the National Theatre hosts the Steppenwolf production of August: Osage County in November.
A massive success on Broadway, August: Osage County won a total of five Tony Awards, New York’s version of the Laurence Olivier Awards, including Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for Dunagan, Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role for Reed, Best Play and Best Direction of a Play for Anna D Shapiro, who also directs at the National Theatre.
The Tony Award-winning pair is joined in the London production by original cast members Ian Barford, Kimberley Guerrero, Mariann Mayberry, Michael McGuire, Amy Morton, Sally Murphy, Jeff Perry, Molly Ranson and Troy West, and cast newcomer Paul Vincent O’Connor.
Tracy Letts’s comic drama concerns the large Weston family, which unexpectedly reunites in Oklahoma following the disappearance of its father. But when everyone gathers together, the home explodes in a maelstrom of repressed truths and unsettling secrets.
August: Osage County was first staged at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater, before transferring to Broadway where it was described in the New York Times as “the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years”. The winter season at the South Bank will be the second time that Steppenwolf has worked at the National Theatre, following the 1989 production of The Grapes Of Wrath, which starred Gary Sinise.
MA