By Carolyn Hayes

Viciousness shouldn’t be quite so funny, nor frailty quite so compassionate, but family’s weird that way. For the final production of its season, Hilberry Theatre takes on playwright Tracy Letts’s much-lauded and recently film-adapted “August: Osage County,” an epic tragicomedy chronicling resounding disaster and slovenly catharsis in one fractious Oklahoma clan. Fittingly, this story of homecoming features the return of Hilberry alumnus James R. Kuhl as director and a hotly anticipated guest performance by faculty member Lavinia Hart, who join with the graduate student company in pushing the vast ranges of this exhaustive script as far as parameters allow.

At the play’s outset, the only inhabitants of the Weston house are the declining, adversarial Beverly (Alec Barbour) and Violet (Hart), along with their respective all-consuming addictions. When Beverly abruptly hires a live-in housekeeper (Sarah Hawkins Moan) and just as promptly disappears, it serves as the catalyst to bring the couple’s three daughters back to their childhood home, with families – and baggage – in tow.

For Barbara (Danielle Cochrane), the added familial responsibility puts more weight on her spiraling marriage to Bill (Miles Boucher), whose insistent neutrality stings harder than hate and presents a parenting impasse over their cautiously willful teenaged daughter (Egla Kishta). As all eyes begin turning to Barbara as de facto decision maker, Cochrane seizes over and over on the fallibility of instinct, agitating for external control in hopes of filling a personal void.

In contrast, self-serving Karen (Megan Barbour) makes clear the obligatory nature of her visit as she unflappably flaps her gums about herself. As her newly introduced fiancé, Brandon Grantz makes himself well at home in the humor of his deftly bro-y cocktail of glossy sociability and simmering sleaze.

Finally, always underfoot is Ivy (Annie Keris), treated more like a hated afterthought than an entity by her haranguing mother. She’s a resentful member of the faction who stayed close to the home front, playing caretaker and watchdog in concert with Violet’s loudmouthed, cruel sister (Bevin Bell-Hall), her gentle, affectionate brother-in-law (Brandy Joe Plambeck), and their balmy, inoffensive screw-up of a son (David Sterritt).

The play is confined to the realm of the house and family; the only whiff of the outside world comes from occasional visits by the sheriff (Topher Alan Payne), who gently dispenses information sandwiched in sincerity and contrition. Designer Leazah Behrens fills up the stage with the house’s many rooms and floors, looking straight through the walls (as if by X-ray) in a manner that makes the space somehow feel both tremendous and stifling. Lighting cues by designer Heather DeFauw seem to let the house breathe with its inhabitants, waking up rooms and regions at times when the action grows, and closing in on awful isolation at others.

A few clever concessions have been made to fit the house in the given playing space, most notably tucking the “attic” to one side of the stage, with the suggestion that its visitors have climbed up from the second floor. The non-literal geography of the floor plan isn’t particularly instinctive, but it makes abstract sense, requiring a bit of viewer flexibility in the same way that the casting might. Yes, it takes some extra mental energy to keep ages and relationships straight when aunts, uncles, and cousins are played by actors in a narrow age range, but it’s a necessary concession given the nature of the Hilberry program, and it ultimately doesn’t detract from the work being done.

Clare Hungate-Hawk helps in this regard by making clear generational choices in costuming, while also allowing the most important character relationships to show in the progression of clothing choices. It’s part and parcel of a very tactile design, with extensive set dressing and properties (the latter by Mike Sabourin) as well as fight choreographer Sterritt’s startling physical clashes.

Kuhl’s direction shows in the flow and pacing upon which the production’s panoply of scenarios and tones rise and fall. The family dynamic is exceptionally intact, as evidenced by strong group work in reactions and listening, a must for a play that takes place in a succession of adjoining rooms, devoid of secrecy. Pervasive contrast of foreground and background extends to balletic transition montages that show the intertwining relationships that continue beyond what is shown onstage. These thematic knells complement the scripted action, which here dwells on circumstances coming full circle, giving the production a pleasing cyclic momentum.

Yet there are moments when one character wrests the scene away from the others, another dichotomy in a show that thrives on them – hilarity on the heels of devastation, established relationships in progress followed by strangers getting acquainted, comfortable stillness at odds with galloping momentum. The script is exceptional and stands on its own, but it gains much in moments of pointed play with the language, and the student company has its share of success turning jokes to rolling laughs with acerbic, awkward, or oblivious deliveries.

But the most persistent performance is that from Hart, who takes one of the play’s most demanding roles and devours it in big, succulent mouthfuls. This is far more than a whacked-out pill popper long past reproach, but rather an impossibly judicious amalgamation of family politics, fear, manipulation and remorse, countering vengeful bile with moments of gut-busting hilarity and plaintive weakness. Yet in spite of the vitriol, she’s a strangely empathetic figure, a tragic monster around which this universe tightly spins.

Just to watch this play is an emotional workout, weathering expletives and contemptible barbs, as well as some decidedly mature subject matter. But this production’s three acts keep the wheels turning, and its three-plus hours pass like a whirlwind, thanks to an unwavering through line and performances that reach the sublime. Viewers who like hard-hitting theater will relish this pummeling in the best, worst way.