Edward Albee (1928-2016)

Edward Albee has written and directed some of the greatest plays of modern American drama. He won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for ‘Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?’(1962) and went on to win three Pulitzer prizes, for ‘A Delicate Balance’ (1966), ‘Seascape’ (1975) and ‘Three tall Women (1994).

In his early plays such as The zoo Story (1958) and The American dream (1961), Albee experimented with the Theatre of the absurd. The zoo Story is a one-act play concerns two characters, Peter and Jerry, who meet on a park bench in New York City's Central Park. Peter is a wealthy publishing executive with a wife, two daughters, two cats, and two parakeets. Jerry is an isolated and disheartened man, desperate to have a meaningful conversation with another human being. He intrudes on Peter’s peaceful state by interrogating him and forcing him to listen to stories about his life and the reason behind his visit to the zoo. In fact “nothing happens” except conversation until the violent ending. The play was designed to shock audiences out of complacency and bring them face to face with the painful facts of life. The appearance on the American stage of this tragically alienated character, Jerry, with his powerful rhetoric, had a similar effect to that of John Osborne’s Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger (1956) on the British stage. Albee was hailed as the new voice of contemporary American life and the leader of a new theatrical movement.

The American Dream (1961) exemplifies Albee’s trademark of a middle class American family living on illusion and dominated by an overbearing woman. It’s a dark and grotesque comedy, on the one hand it resembles Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, having a domestic setting; on the other it resembles Ionesco’s Bald Soprano in its depiction of highly exaggerated characters.

Albee’s first full length play Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is unquestionably his best and holds a place beside the best of Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller in the history of American drama. It portrays the venomous marriage of one of the most memorable couples of western literature George and Martha. The couple treat each other, and their guests, to a night of heavy drinking, accompanied by dangerous and psychologically twisted verbal games. By the end of the night a shocking truth emerges- having blamed each other for their adult son leaving home, it emerges that the son is a figment of their combined fantasy, which they have maintained for 21 years as a defense against fear, alienation and the disappointment of life. The play is superbly constructed in its intellectual dialogue and violent emotional outbursts. Albee’s message is that living under illusions become destructive to any relationship. The title is unconnected with Virginia Woolf, but is borrowed from the children’s song ‘Who is afraid of the big bad wolf?, which symbolises the fears and insecurities of modern life.

 A Delicate Balance (1966) dealt with issues similar to those explored in Who is afraid of the big bad wolf?, but in a more moderate manner. The two plays are linked in the way they recognise that social norms, family rituals and even devious behaviour are defense mechanisms against an existential fear that cannot be named. A delicate Balance is about a married couple, Tobias and Agnes, who unexpectedly have to give refuge to some friends whose presence disrupts the precarious peace and civility. The result is a display of antisocial, hysterical, aggressive and altogether grotesque behaviour by the family members. The line between sanity and insanity becomes very thin. The premise of the first part of the play has an affinity with The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill- it is better to live in illusion than to suffer a disrupting influence.

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With Seascape (1974), a charming and entertaining fantasy, Albee produced a liveliness and lightness that had been absent from his plays for over a decade. A middle aged couple, Nancy and Charlie, meet Sarah and Leslie, two amphibians who are about to evolve. The amphibians are very much like humans, with middle class human values and friction in their marriage. The creatures have doubts about evolving when they realise that human emotions can be painful. The evolution is a metaphor for the uncertainty about what to do when one stage of human life comes to an end. The play ends with Nancy and Charlie promising to help the amphibians with their quest to become human.

During 1970s and 80, his production slowed down and his plays were not commercially successful. Later, in 1994 Albee recaptured the verve of his earlier plays with Three Tall Women (1994), which was indeed a success. The plot consist of a haughty, bitter old woman lies dying, attended by two other women and visited by a young man. The play is about forgiveness, reconciliation and fate, presented through Albee’s black sense of humour.

The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (2002), a witty and hilarious but disturbing play, his most controversial one. Martin, a successful architect, living harmoniously with his wife Stevie and their homosexual son, falls in love with Sylvia, a Goat, and when his bizarre secret comes out, the whole family structure is destroyed. What starts as a drawing room comedy turns into a tragedy of marital infidelity with a shocking different. There is also a hint of incest between the father and the son. The play’s concern is to test our limits of tolerance by transgressing taboos.

Albee’s work largely exhibits the influence of Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. He depicts humankind’s inability to communicate and the human need for integration involvement with others.