By Tracy Letts. Directed by Janet Wright. An Arts Club Theatre Company production. At the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage on Wednesday, February 2. Continues until February 27

Well, you get your money’s worth in terms of time: with two intermissions, August: Osage County runs well over three hours. Within that period, this Arts Club production boasts a good deal of impressive acting, although I wouldn’t call the evening coherent.

Tracy Letts’s script, which won him a Pulitzer Prize as well as Tony and Drama Desk awards, feels kind of like Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?—without the depth.

It’s a hot Oklahoma summer, and family matriarch Violet Weston has mouth cancer. She smokes, but a more probable cause of her illness is the poison that flows like tar through her lips whenever she speaks. Violet likes to stay stoned on prescription pills, but straight or messed up, she takes every opportunity to abuse her three daughters when they gather in Pawhuska after the sudden disappearance of their alcoholic father. Violet tells her daughter Ivy to stop dressing like a lesbian or she’ll never get a man, and she informs her daughter Karen that she’s getting ugly—as all women do when they age, according to the once-pretty Violet.

Not much of this matters. In Virginia Woolf, the alcoholic main characters tear one another apart because that’s how they love; understanding that, you invest in their relationship. Here, the family members simply can’t stand one another, and the abuse is pointless. In Virginia Woolf, the characters painfully dismantle a toxic fantasy until they reach a catharsis. In August: Osage County, Letts keeps the plot moving by doling out unconnected bits of melodramatic information: Violet tells us about her traumatic childhood, and there are various revelations involving sexual taboos. It’s like the playwright keeps stopping for gas, but where the hell is he going?

At the last minute, the play turns into CSI: Pawhuska, and throughout, the plot turns are often predictable: as soon as Karen says she’s engaged to the man of her dreams, you know he’s going to be a jerk.

Still, there are some great lines in August: Osage County. Complaining about a black pantsuit that Ivy has worn to a funeral, Violet says, “You look like a magician’s assistant.” And I suspect that the play has the potential to be darker and more resonant than director Janet Wright allows it to be here.

That said, Wright gets solid performances from her 13-member cast. Susinn McFarlen is hilariously coarse as Violet’s sister Mattie Fae, and Brian Linds finds all of the soft folds in Charlie, Mattie Fae’s loving but fed up husband. Megan Leitch has been cast as Karen, who spouts personal-growth platitudes but fights like a street dog when pushed to the wall; she expertly reveals the desperation beneath Karen’s innocent mask. Having been absent from the stage since 2006, Wendy Noel makes a welcome return playing Ivy, and she is as fearlessly raw as ever. Karin Konoval’s portrait of eldest daughter Barbara is clear, even as Barbara flirts with turning into her mother. And although she seemed to be skating around her lines on opening night, Nora McLellan makes Violet a watchably funny, though unsympathetic, wreck.

There’s a scene at the beginning of Act 3 in which the three sisters hang around talking. The exchange is intimate and subtle. For a few moments, Letts isn’t desperate to entertain, and the result—in this production, at least—is the best scene in the play.

Watch the trailer for the Arts Club Theatre Company's production of August: Osage County.