Phylicia Rashad in August: Osage County

I have some mixed feelings about this.  First off, race aside, Phylicia Rashad is the wrong acrtess to play Violet.  As Helen Shaw put it yesterday, "she always brings a sense of invulnerability to her roles".   On a presence-level, it seems a mistake.

Second is the issue of race, about which I'm a little more ambivolent, or I guess my take on the issue is twofold.

Fold #1: I do not on a theoretical level think having a racially integrated cast for August: Osage County is bad. It may alter the relationships between the family and Johnna, but just because a Black person is talking to a Native American doesn't make the conversation less racially charged, it just makes that charge different.  (This is to say nothing of how poorly written and borderline-offensive the character of Johnna is, it really is the play's Achilles Heel, and I love that play).

Fold #2: It is, however, nonsensical to have a fairly-realistic play (I mean, it's hightened stylistically, but it's still basically a work of realism) with a Black grandmother without also racially altering at least a few of the rest of the cast members, particularly the actress playing her sister and the actors playing her children.  In other words, this is a great opportunity to put more actors of color into the play. A missed opportunity that now makes the casting of Rashad seem... frankly...careless and stunty.

I am a fan of integrated casts and "nontraditional" casting.  And I don't particularly care about the race of characters as conceived in the play unless its necessary (in other words, that Tracy Letts imagined that these characters would be white doesn't really matter unless the understanding of their whiteness is inherent somehow to the play which I do not think it is; it is inherent to one interpretation or version of it, but that's something that has to be decided on a text-by-text basis, whereas in, say Ruined the play would not work if you had white actors playing any of the non-white parts in the show). I agree with 99Seats that:

 August: Osage County starts off very much about the problems of rich white people, but near the end, it gains a resonance about the generation raised during the (first) Great Depression and how that experience changed them and affects their families and, by extension, the country. It's not too heavy-handed, but it's there and it's effective (more effective than the standard, minority-outsider-observer). I can definitely see why it won the big prize.

But if you change the racial mix of the play...woo, boy. I think you wind up with something even more interesting and complicated.

  But it still has to be handled with care and intelligence, and just plugging in an African American Violet is not doing either.

Comments

[Ken]

I agree that this is a terrible move by the producers. Phylicia Rashad is a wonderful actress, but her presence in this fairly realistic play will raise a boatload of questions the play doesn't need. Is the character of Violet now supposed to really be African-American? And if so, won't the idea of an interracial couple getting together in Oklahoma all those decades ago hover over the play like an unwanted ghost, raising questions the play's not equipped to handle? This casting decision makes no more sense than having Vanessa Redgrave take over Rashad's role in "Raisin in the Sun." An all-black cast of "August:Osage" would be one thing (and might be very interesting, come to think of it), but this casting decision just seems like a stunt. I hope "Osage" doesn't become the "Chicago" of straight plays, where every celebrity (and near-celebrity) with time on their hands wanders through just long enough to put a Broadway credit in their bio.

[Ken]

PS: To clarify, the last bit of earlier my comment does not refer to Ms. Rashad, who is a Broadway veteran, and as I said in my comment, a fine actress.

[Scott Walters]

"Rich white people"? Middle class, perhaps, but not rich. They are academics in state universities, not celebs.

[99]

I think of "rich" as a relative term. Given the size of the home, the size of the family, the relative conditions of things, yeah, sure, I'd say upper middle class. Celebs aren't the only rich people in the world.

And I (sort of obviously) agree completely with Ken. They could drop Ms. Rashad in there and not say a word, but they would also be missing a pretty big opportunity.

[lisa]

id like to know why the fuck does it matter if shes freaking black? i see the family the same way if shes black.johna is a differemt story shes native american and outsider looking in at the family its just different race. I think you guys failed to capture the meaning of the play because you were to stuck on race.