Searching for playwrights similar to Martin McDonagh led me to Tracy Letts - I can see how the algorithms would come to this conclusion. There's a definite sense of place to August, an American feeling that is similar in presence to McDonagh's Ireland.

Family sagas are absolutely engrossing if pulled together with deft hands and Letts does not disappoint. These people are absolutely dysfunctional; they're stubbornly holding onto the slippery threads of blood ties, teeming with well-honed hatred and frustration. It's boiling over in every interaction and it is fantastic. Also, there's a bit of incest, y'know. Like you do. (It's extra spicy, because family secrets).

While the Beverly, the Weston family patriarch, was missing for a good third of the play, for me the real suspense was whether or not Violet (the family matriarch) was going to keel over at any time from the extensive collection of pills she kept popping. ("Valium. Vicodin. Darvon, Darvocet. Percodan, Percocet. Xanax for fun. OxyContin in a pinch. Some Black Mollies once, just to make sure I was still paying attention. And of course Dilaudid. I shouldn't forget Dilaudid.")

This habit of hers led to my favorite interaction of the entire work:

BARBARA: [Violet] smuggled Darvocet into the psych ward ... in her vagina. There's your Greatest Generation for you. She made this speech to us while she was clenching a bottle of pills in her cooch, for God's sake.
KAREN: God, I've never heard that story.
IVY: Did you just say "cooch"?
BARBARA: The phrase "Mom's pussy" seems a bit gauche.
IVY: You're a little more comfortable with "cooch", are you?
BARBARA: What word should I use to describe our mother's vagina?

and fucking scene.