Adultery, divorce, seduction, non-consensual sex, alcohol, marijuana, suicide, anger, lies, infidelity, incest: a litany of modern sins. We witnessed August: Osage County last night at Avila University. I say "witness" in the religious sense. August: Osage County is a highly religious modern drama/dark comedy. Religious in what sense you ask? 

In this portrait of family disintegration and collapse, a Cheyenne Native American woman, Johnna Montevata, stands as witness to the spiritually vacuous American family. With success in the arts (the father is a successful poet), and financially stable, the family nonetheless has no spiritual core. The Cheyenne housemaid, by contrast, although an impoverished orphan, attaches her life to family and tribal values as she wears a traditional amulet bearing her umbilical cord around her neck. The amulet symbolizes attachment to mother/ parents/tribe/traditional values, of which the American family is devoid. The play demonstrates that as individualism triumphs and Americans construct our own self-absorbed values, the family disintegrates. August: Osage County stands witness to the spiritual/moral impoverishment of modern American society, and it's inability to create a moral ground on which to build a humane life.

Erika Radcliffe-Potter Intfen is just terrific playing the role of Mattie Fae Aiken in this marvelous Avila University production.