The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee

Edward Albee, perhaps best known for his acclaimed and infamous 1960s drama Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is one of America's greatest living playwrights. Now in his seventies, he is still writing challenging, award-winning dramas. This collection of essays on Albee, which includes contributions from the leading commentators on Albee's work, brings fresh critical insights to bear by exploring the full scope of the playwright's career, from his 1959 breakthrough with The Zoo Story to his recent Broadway success, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (2002). The contributors include scholars of both theatre and English literature, and the essays thus consider the plays both as literary texts and as performed drama. The collection considers a number of Albee's lesser-known and neglected works, provides a comprehensive introduction and overview, and includes an exclusive, original interview with Mr Albee, on topics spanning his whole career.

List of illustrations

ix

Notes on contributors

xi

Acknowledgments

xv

Notes on the text

xvi

Chronology

xvii

Introduction: The man who had three lives

1

(15)

Stephen Bottoms

Albee's early one-act plays: ``A new American playwright from whom much is to be expected''

16

(23)

Philip C. Kolin

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Toward the marrow

39

(20)

Matthew Roudane

``Withered age and stale custom'': Marriage, diminution, and sex in Tiny Alice, A Delicate Balance, and Finding the Sun

59

(16)

John M. Clum

Albee's 3 1/2: The Pulitzer plays

75

(16)

Thomas P. Adler

Albee's threnodies: Box-Mao-Box, All Over, The Lady from Dubuque, and Three Tall Women

91

(17)

Brenda Murphy

Minding the play: Thought and feeling in Albee's ``hermetic'' works

108

(19)

Gerry McCarthy

Albee's monster children: Adaptations and confrontations

127

(21)

Stephen Bottoms

``Better alert than numb'': Albee since the eighties

148

(16)

Christopher Bigsby

Albee stages Marriage Play: Cascading action, audience taste, and dramatic paradox

164

(14)

Rakesh H. Solomon

``Playing the cloud circuit'': Albee's vaudeville show

178

(21)

Linda Ben-Zvi

Albee's The Goat: Rethinking tragedy for the 21st century

199

(18)

J. Ellen Gainor

``Words; words ... They're such a pleasure.'' (An Afterword)

217

(14)

Ruby Cohn

Borrowed time: An interview with Edward Albee

231

(20)

Stephen Bottoms

Notes on further reading

251

(2)

Select bibliography

253

(6)

Index

259

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The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee

Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials