His works are often considered frank examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet.
His middle period comprised plays that explored the psychology of maturing, marriage and sexual relationships. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's mix of theatricality and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent postwar American theatre in the early 1960s. Later in life, Albee continued to experiment in works such as The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002).
Early life
Edward Albee was born in 1928. His biological father left his mother, Louise Harvey, and he was placed for adoption two weeks later and taken to Larchmont, New York, where he grew up.[2] Albee's adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin AlbeeII, owned several theaters. His adoptive mother, Reed's second wife, Frances (Cotter), was a socialite.[3][4] He later based the main character of his 1991 play Three Tall Women on his mother, with whom he had a conflicted relationship.[5]
Albee attended the Rye Country Day School, then the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, from which he was expelled.[3] He then was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, where he was dismissed in less than a year.[6] He enrolled at The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut,[7] graduating in 1946. He had attracted theatre attention by having scripted and published nine poems, eleven short stories, essays, a long act play, Schism, and a 500-page novel, The Flesh of Unbelievers (Horn, 1) in 1946. His formal education continued at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was expelled in 1947 for skipping classes and refusing to attend compulsory chapel.[7]
Albee left home for good in his late teens. In a later interview, he said: "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."[8] In a 1994 interview, he said he left home at 18 because "[he] had to get out of that stultifying, suffocating environment."[5] In 2008, he told interviewer Charlie Rose that he was "thrown out" because his parents wanted him to become a "corporate thug" and did not approve of his aspirations to be a writer.[9]
Albee moved into New York's Greenwich Village,[6] where he supported himself with odd jobs while learning to write plays.[10] His roommate in New York was the composer William Flanagan.[11] Primarily in his early plays, Albee's work had various characters that challenged the image of a heterosexual marriage.[12] Despite challenging society's views about the gay community, he did not view himself as an LGBT advocate.[12] Albee's work typically criticized the American Dream.[12] His first play, The Zoo Story, written in three weeks,[13] was first staged in Berlin in 1959 before premiering Off-Broadway in 1960.[14] His next, The Death of Bessie Smith, similarly premiered in Berlin before arriving in New York.[15]
Edward Albee by Irish artist Reginald Gray (The New York Times, 1966), inspired by a photograph taken in 1962 from Bettmann/Corbis.
In 1971 he wrote All Over, a two-act play originally titled, Death, the second half of a projected double bill with another play called Life (which later became Seascape).[21] The play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre with John Gielgud directing and starred Jessica Tandy, Madeleine Sherwood, and Colleen Dewhurst. The New York Times writer Clive Barnes wrote, "It is a lovely, poignant and deeply felt play. In no way at all is it an easy play -- this formal minuet of death, this symphony ironically celebrating death's dominion. It is not easy in its structure, a series of almost operatic arias demanding, in their precision, pin-point concentration from the audience, and it is certainly not easy in its subject matter."[22]
In 1974 he wrote Seascape, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It debuted on Broadway with Deborah Kerr and Frank Langella.[23] It was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play losing to Peter Shaffer's Equus.[24] Clive Barnes of The New York Times declared the play "a major event", adding, "As Mr. Albee has matured as a playwright, his work has become leaner, sparer and simpler. He depends on strong theatrical strokes to attract the attention of the audience, but the tone of the writing is always thoughtful, even careful, even philosophic." He compared his work alongside Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter.[25]
Albee continued to write plays including Listening (1976), Counting the Ways (1976) before a brief break before The Lady from Dubuque (1980) which had a short run on Broadway.[26] He wrote the three act play The Man Who Had Three Arms (1983) which was received negatively with Frank Rich of The New York Times writing, "isn't a play - it's a temper tantrum in two acts... One of the more shocking lapses of Mr. Albee's writing is that he makes almost no attempt even to pretend that Himself is anything other than a maudlin stand-in for himself, with the disappearing arm representing an atrophied talent."[27]
Albee's plays during the 1980s received mixed reviews with Michael Billington of The Guardian writing, "American dramatists invariably end up as victims of their own myth: in a success-crazed culture they are never forgiven for failing to live up to their own early masterpieces. But if Edward Albee has suffered the same cruel fate as Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, he has kept on trucking".[28] Billington wrote of Albee's 1987 play, Marriage Play, "At the end the play achieves a metaphorical resonance by suggesting that marriage is an accumulation of meaningless habits and that "nothing has made any difference".[28]
1991–2016: The Later Plays
In 1991 he wrote the play Three Tall Women, a two act play that premiered at the Vienna's English Theatre about three unnamed women. The play was revived in 2018 directed by Joe Mantello starring Glenda Jackson, Laurie Metcalf, and Allison Pill.[29] The 2018 production received the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. Allison Adato of Entertainment Weekly wrote of the play, "Edward Albee's Three Tall Women, in which a nonagenarian revisits events of her life refracted through both her own dementia and the differing recollections of her younger selves, is a not-quite-memory play filled with regret, resentment, entitlement, various bodily indignities".[30]
Georgia State University English professor Matthew Roudane divides Albee's plays into three periods: the Early Plays (1959–1966), characterized by gladiatorial confrontations, bloodied action and fight to the metaphorical death; the Middle Plays (1971–1987), when Albee lost the favor of Broadway audience and started premiering in the U.S. regional theaters and in Europe; and the Later Plays (1991–2016), received as a remarkable comeback and watched by appreciative audiences and critics the world over.[31]
According to The New York Times, Albee was "widely considered to be the foremost American playwright of his generation."[32] The less-than-diligent student later dedicated much of his time to promoting American university theatre. He served as a Distinguished Professor of Playwriting and held the Lyndall Finley Wortham Chair in the Performing Arts at the University of Houston. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service[33] and Samuel French, Inc.
Philanthropy
Albee established the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Inc. in 1967, from royalties from his play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. The foundation funds the William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center (named after the composer William Flanagan, but better known as "The Barn") in Montauk, New York, as a residence for writers and visual artists.[34] The foundation's mission is "to serve writers and visual artists from all walks of life, by providing time and space in which to work without disturbance."[35]
Personal life and death
Albee was gay and stated that he first knew he was gay at age twelve and a half.[36][37]
As a teen in Larchmont, Albee became a close friend of English-born Muir Weissinger Jr. and his family. Albee, along with others, referred to Florence, Muir's mother, as "Mummy". For her part, Albee's mother felt he spent too much time at the Weissinger household. Albee dated Muir's sister, Delphine, and escorted her to her coming-out party. Albee and Delphine had a "long and intense relationship" while it lasted; Albee has said they were "unofficially engaged". Albee kept in touch for a long time with Florence and Muir Weissinger.[38]
Albee insisted that he did not want to be known as a "gay writer", saying in his acceptance speech for the 2011 Lambda Literary Foundation's Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement: "A writer who happens to be gay or lesbian must be able to transcend self. I am not a gay writer. I am a writer who happens to be gay."[39] His longtime partner, Jonathan Richard Thomas, a sculptor, died on May 2, 2005, from bladder cancer. They had been partners from 1971 until Thomas's death. Albee also had a relationship of several years with playwright Terrence McNally during the 1950s.[40]
Edward Albee on July 10, 1999 at LongHouse Reserve, East Hampton, NY - photograph by Neal Marshad
Albee died at his home in Montauk, New York on September 16, 2016, aged 88.[40][41][42]
Albee lived in a 6,000-square-foot loft that was a former cheese warehouse in New York's Tribeca neighborhood. At the time of his death Albee held an expansive collection of fine art, utilitarian works and sculptures. Albee was especially interested in artworks created by indigenous cultures in Africa and Oceania.[43]
↑ Byrne, Chris (2006). "Edward Albee". In Gerstner, David A. (ed.). Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture (1ed.). Routledge. p.35. ISBN9780415306515. Retrieved July 5, 2022.
↑ Gussow, Mel. Edward Albee: A Singular Journey: A Biography. Simon & Schuster (August 18, 1999) ISBN978-0684802787 p.44
↑ "Edward Albee Biography Photo". 2005. Toni Morrison, recipient of the Nobel Prize, and Edward Albee at a reception prior to the Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies during the 2005 International Achievement Summit in New York City.
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