‘Osage County’ hits close to home for KSU actress

By John Benson

entertainment@vindy.com

There was a moment early on when theater actress Amy Warren took over the role of Karen Weston in the Broadway production of 2008 Tony Award-winning “August: Osage County,” which runs tonight through April 25 in Cleveland’s Palace Theatre, that the Toledo native and Kent State University graduate realized the character hit close to home.

“I think she is somebody who all of us know and somebody who I see as a real person,” said Warren, 42, calling from St. Paul, Minn. “I see her as somebody who really struggles and tries to make the best of things and tries to remain optimistic. She’s very different from me in some really huge ways and very much like me in some significant ways. So it’s fun to kind of go out there every night to see what will happen.”

Written by 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy Letts (“Superior Donuts,” “Man From Nebraska,” “Killer Joe,” “Bug”), this grand and gripping new play tells the story of the Westons, a large, extended clan that comes together at their rural Oklahoma homestead after the alcoholic patriarch disappears. Forced to confront unspoken truths and astonishing secrets, the family also must contend with Violet, a pill-popping, deeply unsettled woman at the center of the storm.

“It’s thrilling, it’s just thrilling,” said Warren, who made her Broadway debut with “August: Osage County.” “Everyone was extremely welcoming. It was daunting because I had very little rehearsal time going into the Broadway company, and everybody was fantastic. They all took me aside the first night I was performing in front of 900 people and said. ‘Don’t worry. We felt like we didn’t know what we were doing either.’ Everybody was really just supportive and sweet, and it was a great company. We all had a blast. And just walking down 45th Street every day was just wild to be like, ‘I’m actually going to work here on Broadway.’

“So I did it on Broadway for three months and then when the tour was offered to me, I felt like I still had a lot to do as far as exploring the character. Seeing the play every night is really miraculous. It’s an incredible piece of writing, obviously, and as an actor, it just offers endless risk possibility. I knew I had more to explore there.”

From its 2007 Chicago debut, “August: Osage County” stood out as being something different with its large cast of 13 unique and unforgettable characters. When it closed last June in New York City after 648 performances, it had surpassed “The Heidi Chronicles,” “Master Class,” “The Real Thing” and “Doubt” to become one of the longest-running plays in Broadway history.

Billed as a tragicomedy, the production is the type of play where audiences can find plenty of relatable roles and situations. That’s exactly what happened to Warren.

“It’s the story of a family in Oklahoma where three daughters come home to deal with some family stuff, and the events sort of unfold,” Warren said. “Honestly, across the country where we’ve been performing, people always come up to us and say, ‘God, this is my family. It’s wild to see my family up there.’ So anybody will basically enjoy it.”

After a brief pause, she added, “In fact, when my brother, Ben, saw it, he said, ‘It so reminds me of dinner at our house.’ And I thought, ‘Ohhh, that’s not exactly pleasant.’”