Albee, Edward 1928–

A prize-winning American playwright, Albee has most recently written All Over. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.)

The Zoo Story is both an extremely simple and an extremely mystifying play. It is mystifying because it is so simple. Like Ionesco, who is clearly his literary progenitor, Albee is not saying anything with his play, which is nothing but an excessively fantastic slice-of-life pastiche: he is exemplifying or demonstrating a theme. That theme is the enormous and usually insuperable difficulty that human beings find in communicating with each other. More precisely, it is about the maddening effect that the enforced loneliness of the human condition has on the person who is cursed (for in our society it undoubtedly is a curse) with an infinite capacity for love….

The Zoo Story is not only remarkable as a young writer's first play: it is remarkable...

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