Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Tracy Letts's ``August: Osage County'' is impressive Broadway theater in its very magnitude: 190 minutes in an era of predominantly 90-minute dramas. A dysfunctional-family play that bears comparison with works by O'Neill and Williams, Albee and Shepard, it does leave us in a quandary: Is it more Oklahoma ``Oresteia'' or rural ``Peyton Place''?

Both, in fact. Beverly and Violet Weston, of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, are an elderly couple who have their covenanted domains: alcoholism for the dried-up poet-academic, pill popping for the cancerous, diabolically needling wife. Their three variously damaged daughters are Barbara, who gave up literary promise to follow Bill, her teacher husband, into academic obscurity, and Ivy and Karen --- the one living nearby, the other in Florida --- immersed in mostly unpromising middle-aged promiscuity.

Their men have their own problems: Bill has given up on menopausal Barbara for one of his students. Ivy's secret lover is her cousin, ``Little Charles,'' the unemployable, TV-addicted slacker son of Violet's vulgar, loudmouthed sister Mattie Fae and her good-natured if dull husband, Charles. Karen's thrice- divorced glad-hander of a fiance, Steve, has creepy designs on Barbara and Bill's pot-smoking 14-year-old daughter, Jean.

Only the Westons' Cheyenne housekeeper, Johnna, and the local sheriff, Deon, are in any sense ``normal.''

Savage Digs

The sudden disappearance of Beverly, along with Violet's constant digs and outbursts reaching new heights, turn the now fully occupied three-story house (brilliantly rendered by Todd Rosenthal) into a malignant yet riveting three-ring circus.

The writing artfully mixes drama and comedy, titillating witticism with incisive epigrams. Surprises, suspense and hilarity steadily increase, but so does the oppressive sense of schematism. Letts, an actor-playwright who previously gave us the obnoxious ``Killer Joe'' and fascinating ``Bug,'' confutes his increased stature with too obvious commercial calculation: Every character gets his pathological revelation, fearful or funny or simultaneously both. So this import from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater Co. ends up as mechanism rather than masterpiece.

And yet: Anna D. Shapiro's direction is flawless, and the cast, but for one, could not be better. Deanna Dunagan's Violet, whose ballooning nastiness could easily lapse into gigantism or puniness, remains consistently and amazingly human and believable. No less masterly is Amy Morton's Barbara, horrified by finding herself turning into a Violet, in a performance of finely shaded transitions as well as shattering explosions.

Graceless Grace

Jeff Perry knows how to make Bill's adultery involving, as does Francis Guinan his grumbling and bumbling Charlie, especially in a memorable dinner scene with his graceless delivery of grace. Madeleine Martin's amiable underage delinquent, Jean; Sally Murphy's quietly smoldering Ivy; and Mariann Mayberry's pathetically infantile Karen are no less winning than Rondi Reed's drolly vulgar Mattie Fae and Ian Barford's self-depreciating slacker Little Charles.

Kimberly Guerrero and Troy West are no less persuasive as the unflashy housekeeper and sheriff, respectively. Only the playwright's father, Dennis Letts, as Beverly, overdoes his drunken bluster, perhaps goaded by a truncated role into overcompensation.

No one who enjoys challenging, full-tilt entertainment should abstain from this genuinely well-made Ship of Fools. Those expecting high art might want to think twice before boarding, but that will be their loss.

Imperial Theater, 249 W. 45th St. Information: +1-212-239-6262; http://www.augustonbroadway.com.

`Trumpery'

Peter Parnell, erratic but always interesting, returns after an overlong absence with the spellbinder ``Trumpery,'' at off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Co. It concerns Charles Darwin, making his slow but ineluctable way to momentous discoveries, surrounded by staunch supporters and powerful antagonists.

The friends are Emma, his reserved, devoted wife; Hooker, botanist and admirer; Thomas Henry Huxley, eminent scientist- writer; and two small, spirited children, the mortally ill Annie and the unannoyingly precocious George. The foes are the church and the mob, represented by a vicar and violent protester, respectively; also the influential Owen, whose science is subservient to Christian orthodoxy.

Modest Amateur

And then, most importantly, there is Wallace, a modest amateur scientist, unassumingly making at the antipodes his own parallel discoveries -- perhaps even anticipating Darwin, but without the aptitude and desire for publication of the man whom he selflessly reveres.

Parnell admits in the program liberties taken, though lesser ones than in a not dissimilar Broadway play, Aaron Sorkin's ``Farnsworth Invention.'' But Parnell's play is better written and with a more sympathetic cast of characters, including even an American spiritualist, Williams, who leads a seance that proves a riveting coup de theatre.

Exciting revelations are, as in ``August: Osage County,'' suffused with irresistible humor, but here in a play of ideas that resonates today as significantly as a century and a half ago. What happens when well-researched science goes against established religion? When carefully documented discoveries challenge centuries of pious status quo? Parnell's empathy- commanding characters are caught in an opposition still tearing us apart.

Veddy British

The cast sounds authentically English down to the kiddies, Jack Tartaglia and Rose Paris Yates. Only the actor-playwright Michael Cristofer remains part-American as an otherwise commandingly enacted Darwin, perhaps a trifle too reliant on broad gestures. But under David Esbjornson's cogent direction in Santo Loquasto's lovely garden setting and Jane Greenwood's amusingly idiomatic period costumes, what engrossing performances!

Bianca Amato's enchanting Emma perfectly conveys the interior battleground of spousal affection assaulted by adversarial beliefs. Neil Huff's Huxley compels as far from staid rationalist, wit and gadfly; Michael Countryman's Hooker is a gentlemanly yet staunchly passionate ally; and the charismatic Peter Maloney is equally persuasive as the very British Owen and heartily American Williams.

In what may be the most difficult role, that of Wallace, politely competitive yet self-effacingly admiring, Manoel Felciano is both eccentric and endearing, totally believable whether communicating with birds or lustrously playing second- fiddle to Darwin. He and Cristofer conjure up terrific performances from unseen songbirds and earthworms, bats and monkeys and a much displayed and scrutinized dinosaur bone.

``Trumpery'' transports us from mere spectators into the unbridled involvement of soccer fans at the World Cup. We too become invisible participants onstage in the pursuit of salvation as clashing truths enlist us in a thrilling, funny and terrifying combat we must, as human beings, inescapably join in.

At 336 W. 20th St. Information: +1-212-279-4200; http://www.atlantictheater.org.

(John Simon is the New York drama critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on this story: John Simon in New York at jis1925@aol.com.

Last Updated: December 6, 2007 00:07 EST