Ferocious story about middle America triumphs at Sydney Theatre Awards

Belvoir Street Theatre’s powerful production of August: Osage County dominated the Sydney Theatre Awards at the Seymour Centre on Monday night.

Its take on Tracey Lett’s acclaimed 2007 tragi-comedy, centring on a family in rural Oklahoma, won best mainstage production and Eamon Flack won best direction.

Two of August: Osage County’s stars, Pamela Rabe and Tamsin Carroll, shared best performance in a leading role in a mainstage production. They played, respectively, Violet Weston, the drug-addicted wife of a poet-patriarch played by John Howard, and Barbara Fordham, their eldest daughter.

Reviewing August: Osage County in November, the Herald’s John Shand wrote that the production of “a truly great work” came to life in act two when “the production suddenly reared up on its hind legs and became frightening in its power, ferocity, heart and humour”.

“The chemistry between Violet and Barbara is critical to the play’s success, and Rabe and Carroll make this ferment, even as we wince at their ferocity and what their ferocity hides.“

Also triumphing at the awards was the Shane Anthony Seymour Centre production of Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance, which charts two generations of New York’s gay community through the early AIDS crisis of the 1980s to the current crisis of democracy.

It won best independent production, best ensemble and Anthony collected best direction of an independent production.

The Herald’s Harriet Cunningham wrote that The Inheritance “unravelled with a compelling eloquence” and she praised “the commitment and facility of the large ensemble cast and small creative team”.

Cunningham called the play a colossal achievement: “Ambitious and transformative, flawed at times, and relevant to this moment, it asks much of its performers and its audience but gives so much in return that you come away feeling like you have been handed something infinitely precious.”