Edward Albee Summary

Biography EssayIn the early 1960s it was customary to find the names of four young playwrights linked: Edward Albee, Jack Gelber, Arthur Kopit, and Jack Richardson. These, and certain others like them... Read more

Edward Albee is a playwright best known for such award-winning dramas as The Zoo Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", Tiny Alice, and Three Tall Women. With his confrontational dramas and decidedly... Read more

Early in the twentieth century, American theater critics and drama scholars wondered where the native modern dramatists were--the American equals to Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Anton Chekhov-... Read more

Critical Essay by Richard Schechner Albee gratifies an adolescent culture which likes to think of itself as decadent. We want to believe that we are living in the last days, that the world is fall... Read more

Critical Essay by John Simon The origin of Edward Albee's Tiny Alice seems to be the old homosexual joke about the identity of God, whose punch line is "Actually, she is black." ... Read more

Critical Essay by Robbie Odom Moses All Over confronts, as the title suggests, the endemic trait of all living organisms. Death, the great leveler to a poet like William Cullen Bryant, is, for Albee,... Read more

Critical Essay by Joan S. Fleckenstein Listening, a play with more substance, cohesiveness, and bite [than Counting the Ways], concerns three characters who meet in a garden to exchange insights, rem... Read more

Critical Essay by John Simon Albee is progressing. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was about the emptiness that surrounds and threatens to swallow our relationships; Tiny Alice was about the v... Read more

Critical Essay by Rachel Blau Duplessis Albee transforms social "problems" for which no solution is offered into sexual and family strife, problems for which he has readily available so... Read more

Critical Essay by Dan Sullivan "The Man Who Had Three Arms," is about a man who had three arms. That is to say a man who once had three arms, the extra having gradually sprouted from... Read more

In the following essay, Luere examines The Lorca Story: Scenes from a Life, in which, he asserts, Albee presents "an elegy for an artist's thwarted vision." For over three deca... Read more

In the following essay, Casper explores the enigmatic quality of the structure, themes, characters, and language of Tiny Alice, and offers his own interpretations of the play. When Edward Albee was... Read more

In the following piece, Albee addresses the label, Theatre of the Absurd, that had been attached to his work. He argues that "The Theatre of the Absurd, in the sense that it is truly the contem... Read more

In the following excerpt from the expanded version of his groundbreaking 1961 work, Esslin discusses Albee's plays and declares The American Dream "Albee's promising and brilliant... Read more

In the essay below, the critic expresses reservations about the "surface polish " of Albee's dialogue but concludes that he is "the most skillful composer of dialogue that ... Read more

In the following essay, Kingsley observes how Albee's "struggle with reality and illusion endures throughout the major part of his career. " Albee has had occasion more than on... Read more

In the essay that follows, Hughes presents a largely negative appraisal of Albee's works. Almost from the moment of his first New York production, The Zoo Story (1960), Edward Albee has been... Read more

In the following essay, Yates charges that over the course of Albee's career his characters have grown increasingly abstract, eventually becoming "mere vehicles for the expression of... Read more

In the excerpt below, Adler contends that Albee's early short plays "serve as a culmination or summing up of many of the central emphases of post-World War II American drama." ... Read more

The following interview, conducted by Laurence Maslon, was held in the fall of 1991 as part of the "Conversations with Leading American Playwrights " series sponsored by the Smithsonian ... Read more

Albee receiving the Evening Standard Drama Award for Best Play of 1964, for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In the following essay, Boxandoli delineates standard devices, situations, ... Read more

In the essay below, Knepler examines Albee's uneasy mixture of the American dramatic tradition, with its emphasis on rationality, causation, and explanation, with elements of the Theatre of the... Read more