“Life is very long.” “August: Osage County,” based on Tracy Letts’ highly acclaimed play, begins with the aging writer Beverly Weston (Sam Shepard) quoting that line from T.S. Eliot as he ruminates. Beverly commits suicide a couple of scenes later, abandoning us to an ensemble of characters so excruciating to endure that one understands completely why Beverly would take his own life.
Stage classic comes off shrill, cold