Edward Albee in 5 Plays

One of the American theatre’s most psychologically exacting and sharp playwrights as well as one of only two playwrights to win three Pulitzer Prizes in Drama, Edward Albee created an enduring body of work whose legacy has stood the test of time. From portraits of marriages, families and fractured meetings that spoke with frankness and wit to the social concerns of their age, to more absurdist works that found novel ways to explore the human condition, Albee’s work was never less than extraordinary. Through his masterly command of dialogue and eye for an arresting character detail, Albee explored the interactions that enervate, enlighten and give meaning to existence. With forty years between his first and last shows to be produced on Broadway, Albee stood as a titan of American theatre for decades, while countless playwrights, performers and audiences have benefited from his prose.

To learn more about Albee, explore this collection of five plays, which discuss terrified houseguests, vicious marriages and all manners of relationship (even inter-species.) Wide-ranging in scope and date of publication, the works below all nonetheless showcase Albee’s unforgettable talent.

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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) (US/UK)

George, a professor at a small college, and his wife, Martha, have just returned home, drunk from a Saturday night party. Martha announces, amidst general profanity, that she has invited a young couple – an opportunistic new professor at the college and his naïve new bride – to stop by for a nightcap. When they arrive the charade begins. The drinks flow and inhibitions melt. It becomes clear that Martha is determined to seduce the young professor, and George couldn’t care less. But underneath the edgy banter which engulfs both couples lurks an undercurrent of tragedy and despair.

One of the most famous portraits of a marriage in terminal decline, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a sensation from the moment it opened at the Billy Rose Theatre on October 13, 1962. With a star-studded cast featuring Uta Hagen, Arthur Hill and George Grizzard, the show ran to sold-out crowds for 664 performances. A critical as well as commercial success, it received the 1963 Tony Award and 1963 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play, and was selected as the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Drama recipient before the award’s advisory board objected to the show’s frank depiction of sexual themes, resulting in two members of the jury resigning in protest. Said frankness greatly contributed to the show’s endurance, with decades of audiences being fascinated by the vicious insults and caustic relationship between George and Martha. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was then adapted into an equally-acclaimed film version, which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton at the height of their fame. A perennial favorite among theatres for its meaty roles and memorable dialogue, the show established Albee’s early reputation as the chronicler of modern romances (and hatreds.)

A Delicate Balance (1966) (US/UK)

Albee’s reputation as a gifted dramatist continued to grow with this next work, which won him the first of his three Pulitzer Prizes. Here, the calcifying and strained relations of the upper middle classes that defined his earlier work took on a more disturbing dimension with the addition of mysterious, unexplainable anxieties. In A Delicate Balance, wealthy, middle-aged couple Agnes and Tobias have their complacency shattered when Harry and Edna, longtime friends, appear at their doorstep claiming an encroaching, nameless “fear” has forced them from their own home. These afflicted neighbors bring a firestorm of doubt and recrimination with them, throwing Agnes and Tobias’ conceptions of their lives and themselves off-kilter.

Premiering at the Martin Beck Theatre on September 22, 1966 and featuring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy as Tobias and Agnes, the production ran for 132 performances and was nominated for five 1967 Tony Awards. Another classic exploration of what lies beneath the carefully-cultivated façades of suburbia, A Delicate Balance played to Albee’s strengths as a psychological portraitist and creator of dramatic unease.

Seascape (1975) (US)

The second of Albee’s works to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Seascape shows Albee’s adjacency to the Theatre of the Absurd. While not as completely deconstructive as some of the movement’s most famous works, Seascape shares the same fascinations with the human condition that characterize the Absurd. Ironically, these works argue, the best way to investigate human existence it may be to step outside the bounds of reality. Here, on a deserted stretch of beach a middle-aged couple, relaxing after a picnic lunch, talk idly about home, family and their life together. She sketches, he naps, and then suddenly they are joined by two sea creatures – lizards who have decided to leave the ocean depths and come ashore.

Despite the play’s unusual setting, it still connected with audiences and continued Albee’s rise to the very heights of American theatre. While the original production at the Shubert Theatre, which starred Deborah Kerr, Frank Langella, Maureen Anderman and Barry Nelson, only ran for 65 performances, it received great critical acclaim, with Clive Barnes writing in the New York Times that the play contained “many interesting emotional and intellectual reverberations.” Albee’s work had always been considered thought-provoking, but Seascape expanded the tools with which Albee worked to express the mysteries of human (and lizard) relations. The questions that animate our lives, Albee argues, are the same no matter the scaliness of our skin. The answers to the questions are moving, witty and often unknowable.

Three Tall Women (1991) (US)

A more autobiographical work, Albee based the character of A (who we see at various stages in her life in the play) on his remembrances of his own mother. Albee himself referred to the play as a “kind of exorcism.” The raw subject matter stemmed from his upbringing, as Albee had been placed for adoption as a baby before being taken in by conservative parents who disapproved of his desire to pursue a career in the arts. As a result, Albee would leave home at 18 – a decision that the unnamed son in Three Tall Women also pursues. In Albee’s own words, the result was that, “I never felt comfortable with the adoptive parents. I don’t think they knew how to be parents. I probably didn’t know how to be a son, either. And, I stayed pretty much to myself. I had a fairly active inner life. I certainly didn’t relate to much of anything they related to.”

Transmuted into a powerful, moving work that won Albee his third Pulitzer, Three Tall Women presents A (a ninety-two-year-old woman,) B (her middle-aged paid caretaker) and C (the young lawyer sent to sort out A’s finances.) In the play’s second act, B and C transform into versions of A at different stages of her life. This structurally inventive play premiered at Vienna’s English Theatre in Vienna, Austria on June 14, 1991, directed by Albee himself, before debuting in the West End and in a celebrated off-Broadway production in 1994. A gift for female actors, productions of Three Tall Women have featured Glenda Jackson and Laurie Metcalf (who both won Tony Awards for their portrayals of A & B in the 2019 Broadway revival), Maggie Smith, Alison Pill, Frances de la Tour, Marian Seldes and Frances Conroy. Once again, Albee had found an inventive and innovative way to explore connections across time and space and added another entry in his canon of eighty roles that any actor would find a joy to perform.

The Goat Or, Who Is Sylvia? (2002) (US)

Controversial, wild and stunning, The Goat Or, Who Is Sylvia? was a fitting capstone to Albee’s dramatic career. On his 50th birthday, Martin, a world-famous architect, prepares for a recorded interview by an old friend in the TV business, but the interview uncovers a secret. Martin is in love with a goat. The resulting fallout destroys the bonds he has with his wife Stevie and son Billy, and challenges audiences to determine exactly how far they are willing to justify acts made in the name of love. Handled with great delicacy, the play does not treat Martin’s fixation with the titular Sylvia as mere kink or an expression of trauma, but a rational, thought-out decision to pursue his desires. Although the play’s subject matter is absurdist, it is underpinned with the same exacting psychological insight that had defined Albee’s work for four decades.

Premiering at the John Golden Theatre on March 10, 2002, The Goat Or, Who Is Sylvia? ran for 309 performances and starred Bill Pullman as Martin and Mercedes Ruehl as Stevie. The production was, like much of Albee’s work, critically-beloved, with Cristopher Isherwood writing in Variety that the play was, “unflinching, remarkable, and perversely funny.” Isherwood’s review could have acted as a fitting epitaph for Albee’s career as a whole – piercing into the human soul while never losing sight of theatre as an entertainment medium.

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To discover more of Edward Albee’s sharp and discomfiting work, explore the Edward Albee Collection in the US or UK.