The Big Cast, Bigger Canvas, of Broadway
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
THERE are not a lot of firm bets in this year’s Tony races, but it’s pretty certain that Tracy Letts will need to make a little more room on his expanding awards shelf. Mr. Letts’s blistering family drama “August: Osage County” has already received several significant awards, notably the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle award. The top Tony, should it arrive on cue, will crown a remarkable season for Mr. Letts and his colleagues from the Steppenwolf Theater Company, the Chicago troupe that created this electrifying production.

Maybe more remarkable than the pileup of trophies is the show’s popularity with Broadway audiences. This has been an unusually high-caliber season, but quality is not necessarily a guarantee of warm bodies in the seats; quite frequently there seems to be an inverse relationship between aesthetic achievement and popular appeal.

“August” became the rare commercial play on Broadway to recoup its investment by the season’s end. And it entered the field with a veritable litany of handicaps: no stars, a little-known playwright and a daunting running time of more than three hours. That’s in addition to the havoc wrought by the stagehands strike in the fall, which forced the postponement of the show’s opening. When “August” finally opened in early December, the calendar was chockablock with premieres.

The heady critical reception certainly helped, but good notices did little for several of the season’s other productions. “August” connected with audiences as few contemporary plays manage to do, becoming the kind of event that the ever-uncertain, ever-underappreciated theater industry sorely needs. (The season’s other event, the celebrated revival of “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific,” is the other sure thing at this season’s Tonys.)

The popularity of “August” surely does speak to the play’s quality and the theatrical accomplishment of its fine company of actors, three of whom are up for Tonys, as is its director, Anna D. Shapiro, and set and lighting designers. But I think it also reveals a continuing hunger on the part of audiences for drama on a grand scale, the kind of big, broad, juicy plays that were once a staple of any Broadway season but that have become increasingly rare as the American theater has gone on a slimming diet for the last few decades.

Its nearly Shakespeare-size cast of 13 makes “August” a distinct anomaly today. The performers in most new plays produced at major American theaters could fit inside a Volkswagen Bug, along with the understudies and half the front row. The three-act, two-intermission structure of “August” is almost unheard of. Plays written when three acts were the norm are now usually redivided into two upon revival.

I’m enormously fond of recent, small-scaled American plays like John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt” (cast of four), David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Rabbit Hole” (five) and Doug Wright’s “I Am My Own Wife” (one). But one reason I flipped for “August” was its superabundance of characters, of conflicts, of surprising revelations and savage jokes, of no-she-didn’t thrusts from its combative central character, the domineering mother played so unforgettably by Deanna Dunagan. It’s not just about bodies, or running time, of course (see last season’s “Coram Boy”), but of dramatic scope, theatrical invention and sheer entertainment value. “August” is a big play in just about every way.

Intriguingly, should it win, “August” will become the third large-scale play in as many seasons to take home the top Tony award while appealing to wide audiences, suggesting that bigger often is better — or at least better liked. Last year Tom Stoppard’s three-part disquisition on 19th-century Russian thought and literature, “The Coast of Utopia,” scored both a hit with audiences and took the top Tony. The year before, the prize went to Alan Bennett’s “History Boys,” an expansive comedy-drama about a class of British schoolboys, which also proved to be an unexpected hit with audiences. Neither of these shows’ subject matter was of natural interest to a wide American audience. They became draws because they were events — big, bold plays, impressive and capacious.

It is telling that both came from Britain, specifically from the National Theater in London. Mr. Stoppard and Mr. Bennett have the luxury of writing for a robust industry that gets significant support from the government, despite recent cutbacks. Expense is not a consideration when their imaginations take fire. Mr. Stoppard could write a nine-part saga mixing Norse legends with a contemporary drama about nuclear proliferation (cast of 196), and the National Theater would proudly put it onstage.

The prospects for production are far different for American playwrights, writing for a constellation of not-for-profit theaters that are continually scrambling to raise funds as corporate giving dries up and subscribers drain away. Submit a drama with an ample cast to a regional theater’s literary department, and you’ll probably be asked to cut characters. Mr. Letts’s freedom to think big was surely a result of his status as a member of Steppenwolf, one of the few real theatrical troupes left of any size and stature.

A true artist, some might argue, can never let canny considerations of production influence his vision. Art must be its own imperative. A high-minded thought, but artists also hunger for their work to be known. A play that is never staged may be a work of genius, sure, but its genius is likely to leave no footprint on the world unless it is produced.

How to find a remedy? It would be lovely if a megacorporation would step forward and establish, say, the Citibank Annual Fund for the Support of Secondary Characters in American Drama. But not likely, I fear. The collaborative model that was used to produce the work of August Wilson, perhaps the last American playwright to regularly write large-scale works, is one potential answer, but there are no simple solutions.

The problem needs important consideration. In the new century theater will have to compete ever more fiercely for public attention and public dollars. Entertainment options continue to proliferate, with ease of access being an increasing allurement.

The popularity of plays like “August: Osage County” suggests that big audiences are willing to put down the iPod if playwrights employ all the resources of the theater — its immediacy, intimacy and imaginative scope — to put forth stories that explore the panorama of human experience on a grand scale.

I’m not suggesting that size alone matters, obviously. But if the American theater is to remain an aesthetically robust enterprise, a vital step may be removing the invisible shackles from the imaginations of playwrights, making it natural — making it possible — for them to dream huge once again.