Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Three Tall Women (John Golden Theatre, New York) ★★★★★

by
ABR Arts 19 April 2018

Three Tall Women (John Golden Theatre, New York) ★★★★★

by
ABR Arts 19 April 2018

It’s easy to forget how young Edward Albee was when he wrote his first plays, The Zoo Story, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Delicate Balance. Perhaps it was his choice of subjects and types that obscured the New Yorker’s precocity. In a way, Albee was always middle-aged – like his great characters (George, Tobias, Agnes), with their dashed hopes and jaded marriages. Think of Harry and Edna in A Delicate Balance, who crash at Tobias and Agnes’s house one quiet, murderous Friday evening – The Friends Who Came To Stay Forever – and why? because they were frightened (frightened by something nameless). Terror, loathing, disaffection, in Albee’s syntactically lethal world, were the norm. Yet Albee was in his early thirties when he created Martha (greatest of American monsters), with her brilliant zingers about the wreckage of a twenty-year marriage; and not much older when he drove Harry and Edna out into the night looking for more succour than you can find at a country club.

As B. remarks in Three Tall Women, currently being revived at the Golden Theatre in New York under Joe Mantello’s direction, ‘It’s downhill from sixteen on! For all of us!’ She goes on to fantasise about six-year-olds learning about death at the age of six (‘Make ’em aware that they’re dying from the minute they’re alive’). It gets a laugh in the stalls, a queasy laugh.

From the New Issue

Comment (1)

  • What a great review. Albee deserves it. I've been viewing and reading his plays for years and frequently feel he is treated dismissively by Americans. I saw this play, a success, but also The Lady from Dubuque, for example, and one couldn't believe the bad-tempered reviews, inviting Mr. Albee to throw in the towel and that sort of thing. Vicious and destructive, in my opinion. You have hit the right note. This is not his best but it is good and certainly worth seeing. Thanks.
    Posted by David Lohrey
    24 April 2018

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.