Best Movies, TV, Books and Theater of the Decade

The Chicago-based actor and playwright Tracy Letts had gained some notoriety for a couple of earlier black comedies — Killer Joe and Bug. But nothing he had written previously was preparation for this grandly conceived, ferociously funny and truly harrowing family saga, in which the death of a family patriarch leads to a donnybrook of recriminations and revelations. The 3 hr. 20 min. play (which moved to Broadway shortly after its world premiere at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater) has the psychological complexity and the emotional generosity to place it firmly in the ranks of the American theater's great family dramas.