August: Osage County

If you’ve always thought your family was the world’s most dysfunctional, a trip to August: Osage County is just what the doctor ordered. Penned by Oklahoma-born playwright/actor Tracy Letts, the ultra-dark Pulitzer- and Tony-winning comedy nods to tragic Camille via Violet Weston — a bitter pill-popping matriarch with cancer and a missing husband. With her entire clan assembled, mama can’t resist the opportunity to unpack the family’s most toxic baggage. When it debuted on Broadway in 2008, Charles Isherwood praised the “turbo-charged tragicomedy” as “flat-out, no asterisks and without qualifications, the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years.” A film adaptation starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts is in the works.