I'll never forget watching the Broadway debut of August: Osage County in 2007 at the Imperial Theater. There were no big names in the cast that had been transferred from the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago and there was an early start time because the play was an epic three hours and 30 minutes. I settled into my seat, with no expectations, hoping to stay awake to make it to the first intermission (there were two), but as the last scene ended and the curtain came down, I remember not being ready for the end, like the feeling you get when you finish a really good book. I could have sat there for another three hours and watched playwright Tracy Letts' dysfunctional Weston family unravel.
The announcement that the play would become a movie and that none of the Broadway actors would be reviving their roles on the big screen was bittersweet, as such announcements always are for theater fans. Instead Hollywood sweethearts Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts will play the pill-popping Weston matriarch Violet and her bitterly oppressed middle-aged daughter Barbara. Now as I watch this trailer packed with more stars than a Vanity Fair Oscar party, I feel pretty doubtful that these massively talented film stars will be able to pull off the magic those Steppenwolf actors -- namely Deanna Dunagan, Amy Morton and Rondi Reed-- created years ago on the Broadway stage. But on the bright side, Letts also wrote the screenplay, so fingers crossed this film will do this masterpiece of the theater justice!