[The Lady From Dubuque] baffled me. It begins with a party of friends who play games around the hostess, a dying woman whose malignancy is matched by the festering poison which issues from the hostile stupidity of her (and her husband's) guests. Such a group … could never be collected in one room and could never remain together for more than a few moments after the initial exchange of insults. Are these people supposed to represent our middle class? Are we to take them as "real" people or as gargoyles inspired by a sickened imagination?

And then after a long scene of random venom, two mysterious figures—a gracious "lady from Dubuque" and a cultivated black man—enter. The supposedly real characters confront the two symbolic ones who are, I presume, minions or heralds of death.

This entrance is followed by a barrage of wisecracks and sententious utterances on a range of unrelated subjects. From this we are to gather that the main question in life is "Who am I?"; it is also asserted that when we die the world comes to an end, etc., etc. Normally I might insist that such thoughts are idle or false, but in this instance there would be no point in doing so because they emerge from a vacuum and go no-where; they float about in a virtually nonexistent context. Albee has not only lost his bearings but also cuts us off from our own, leaving us with no way to argue with him. He has created no dramatic body and therefore cannot make any dramatic or ideological statement.