Civic Center’s ‘August: Osage County’ puts fun in dysfunction

As Beverly Weston tells his Native-American housekeeper in the opening scene of “August: Osage County,” “life is very long.” And then he is dead.

Terry Lett’s award-winning three-act play, currently running through Feb. 28 at the Civic Center of Des Moines, is also very long. But the three and a half hour production about a amusingly dysfunctional family, whose members have returned home to Osage County, Okla., in the sweltering month of August to bury the family patriarch following an apparent suicide, isn’t weighed down by its running time. If anything, the play only gains steam from one act to the next, as almost every character is revealed to be even more screwed up than initially expected.

Violet, Weston’s foul-mouthed widow, has no equal in the play when it comes to having issues, and she’s responsible for many of her three daughters’ own neuroses. Estelle Parsons, of “Roseanne” fame, carries out the caustic, pill-popping role with a fine touch, as she takes turns medicating herself and cutting into anyone within earshot. Nothing gets by her, as she likes to say, but in the end, everyone can’t wait to get away from her.

Each one of the Weston sisters has their own cross to bear in addition to dealing with their mother, and each goes about it in heartbreaking fashion. Karen (Amy Warren) is the flighty sister who is so focused on being positive she refuses to consider leaving her creepy, three-time divorced fiancee, Steve (Laurence Lau). Ivy, desperate to flee to New York after being broken down over the years by her mother, has fallen hopelessly in love with Little Charles (Steve Key), which would be disturbing enough if he was actually her first cousin. And Barbara, performed fantastically by Shannon Cochran, is the fire-tongued daughter who has inherited the role of leading the family forward while watching her marriage fall apart following an affair by her younger-woman seeking husband, Bill (Jeff Still).

Lost in the shuffle of everyone else’s problems is Jean (Emily Kinney), Barbara and Bill’s 14-year-old daughter, who enjoys old movies and smoking pot. Johnna (DeLanna Studi), whose hiring by Beverly (Jon DeVries) in the first scene clearly foreshadows his death to come, does her best to stay out of the fray. And Uncle Charlie and Aunt Libby, performed admirably by Charlie Aiken and Matty Fae Aiken, respectively, provide more examples of how living on “the plains” has shaped this family, for better or (more often) worse.