I die.

Figuratively, of course. But August: Osage County is one dark comedy.

HOT MAMA: Estelle Parsons (from left), Angelica Torn, Amy Warren and Shannon Cochran in "August: Osage County." (Robert J. Saferstein)

At many points during the play last night, I found I was either holding my breath, or out of breath. It’s that good, that moving, and that hysterical. Estelle Parsons (I remember her best from Roseanne) was phenom:

Playing a woman who does no right, Estelle Parsons can do no wrong. She provides the white-hot accelerant for the scorching domestic flash fires of “August: Osage County,” the tragicomic family portrait that puts ultimate fighting in a whole new sphere.

Parsons, who turned an unfathomable 82 just 11 days ago, tears through the part of Violet Weston, a pill-popping, misery-spreading Oklahoma harridan, with the energy of an actor far younger. It’s a performance of uncanny feel and control. And somehow, after 3 1/2 hours of Violet’s Vicodin-laced vitriol on the stage of the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater, you’re still hanging on her words, waiting for her to commit the next outrage.

I know that sounds like a downer, but really – while it was certainly something I took home with me and am still mulling around in my head, it was also highly entertaining. (Let’s not recap the rather-difficult journey Casey and I had getting back to our respective homes, mmmk?)

I highly recommend seeing it. I’ll be at the Kennedy Center until December 20, and then they head out to Arizona (do I have any readers in Arizona? I think I have one… Meghan McCain, is that you? JK, folks, I know she lives in Manhattan.)

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
-The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot