Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Albee, Edward (Vol. 113) - Harold Clurman (review date 27 October 1962)
Albee, Edward (Vol. 113) - Harold Clurman (review date 27 October 1962)
Harold Clurman (review date 27 October 1962)
SOURCE: A review of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in Nation, Vol. 195, No. 13, October 27, 1962, pp. 273-74.
[In the following excerpt, Clurman acknowledges Albee's technical skill, but faults his characterizations in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as one-dimensional.]
Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?… is packed with talent…. It may well prove the best of the season. Its significance extends beyond the moment. In its faults as well as in its merits it deserves our close attention.
It has four characters: two couples. There is hardly a plot, little so called "action," but it moves or rather whirls on its own special axis. At first it seems to be a play about marital relations; as it proceeds one realizes that it aims to encompass much more. The author wants to "tell all," to say everything.
The middle-aged wife, Martha, torments her...
[The entire page is 1380 words long]
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- Introduction
- Principal Works
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Criticism
- Whitney Balliett (review date 4 February 1961)
- Robert Brustein (review date 27 March 1961)
- Harold Clurman (review date 27 October 1962)
- Robert Brustein (review date 3 November 1962)
- Gerald Weales (review date 25 October 1968)
- M. Patricia Fumerton (essay date Summer 1981)
- Katharine Worth (essay date 1981)
- Leonard Casper (essay date 1983)
- Julian N. Wasserman (essay date 1983)
- Edward Albee with Jeffrey Goldman (interview date 1989)
- Mickey Pearlman (essay date 1989)
- Marian Faux (review date December 1994)
- Robert Brustein (essay date 1994)
- Jeane Luere (essay date Spring 1995)
- William Hutchings (review date Autumn 1995)
- James Campbell (review date 11 October 1996)
- Further Reading
- Copyright
