Albee, Edward (Vol. 5) - Albee, Edward 1928–
Albee, Edward 1928–
Albee, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American dramatist, is widely known for powerful avant-garde works depicting the ills of contemporary society. The Zoo Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and A Delicate Balance are among his most celebrated plays. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.)
There is nothing "absurd" about [Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf]. Albee has largely abandoned the specific parodic elements and dragooned whimsy of The Sand Box and The American Dream and the obliquities of The Zoo Story and has, if anything, returned to The Death of Bessie Smith for savage inspiration and neurotic prototypes. But he has advanced from that problem play. [In Virginia Woolf] the action is more inward, and the rhetoric, apart from a few speeches of improbable and high-pitched lamentation, is straightforward, cocky, brutal, knowing and tremendously au...
[The entire page is 4950 words long]
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