Albee, the playwright who invented one of the more complicated and vivid relationships ever in a play in ZOO STORY, has again demonstrated his intimate knowledge of the deeper motives behind human interaction. Every interaction between characters in this play -- from long monologues to short snippets of conversation -- has behind it some manner of conflict.

Everybody in this play needs change, and can only reach it through the destruction of others; Tobias and Agnes who simply want to be left alone, but whose house has been invaded; Julia, the daughter who is betrayed by the fact that her parents gave away her room; Claire, who wants only to excercise her right to a good time; Edna and Harry who aren't quite sure what they need, and subsequently frustrate everyone else.

This is a very heavy play, but written in a such a way that is has the guise of being a comedy. A must-read for anybody that loves drama.

This is so much like Beckett's Human Wishes (throughout, especially II, ii) that either Albee read it in manuscript somehow, or else he felt the necessity of inventing it. The change from Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? is from a precision of language in an easy, American manner to one that is self-conscious and, well, "thought-tormented," and lasting.

The general sense is of a trilogy, Woolf-Balance-Seascape, or rather Pictures at an Exhibition: Town-Country-Seaside.

To date, Edward Albee has won three Pulitzer prizes, has written one of the most famous plays ever--WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (surprisingly not among the three)--and also has written the most famous one-act ever, THE ZOO STORY. A DELICATE BALANCE is one of the Pulitzer winners; anyone who cares about theatre will love this. In performance an electrifying evening, it is also a darn good read--again and again. A tragedy at times hilarious, the stylized piece is an examination of friendship contrasted with family, in which the playwright creates six delicous characters--roles actors especially love and often perform brilliantly. Katherine Hepburn's filmed version comes to mind--a near perfect expression of the matriarch Agnes, who has several problems: her alcoholic sister is drinking in the living room, her daughter is coming home after a failed 4th marriage, and her friends Edna and Harry have decided to move in because they are "afraid" of something. Agnes's husband Tobias is polite, detached, and reasonable. Against bristling tension, the author uses drunken Claire as comic counterpoint to brilliant effect, giving her an accordion (of all things) as prop with which to accent and poke fun. (There's a wonderful sight gag near the end where this character, who isn't supposed to have one drink, is discovered holding two.) We also smile when mousy Edna tries to re-decorate Agnes's home and speaks to the divorcing Julia as if she were her own daughter. (How easily shyness moves to assertiveness, then imperceptibly to cruelty.) So we laugh to keep from crying--but laugh we do! And although Agnes is unforgettable, nevertheless it is Tobias who gets the climactic "aria," an attempt to put his house in order. The dramatist calls our bluff on what we mean by "friends," fusing big ideas in three elegant acts, crystallizing mysterious beauty from carefully chosen words. The result is a theatrical touchstone, one of Edward Albee's many masterpieces, a magnificent gem of a play.

Loved it. Wished I read it before I saw the movie, that way I would have had a purer vision of the play.

This is a great modern play. I loved all the references and word games

I'm directing the play in The Netherlands. Never had to dig so deep as in this play. Did the play before, and now I did some completely new discoveries. What about this: I think Nick is the only true victim. May change that opinion the next rehearsel: 'Woolf' never stops amazing!

"Hamptons Bohemia" is a lovely coffee table book, but it is much more than that. It is a well-researched, thorough history of the artistic life of the Hamptons from the 18th Century to the present day.

The illustrations were an important part of my enjoyment of this book. Almost every page contains a painting by a Hamptons artist, or an offbeat photograph of a group of Hamptons writers or painters. And the illustrations are beautifully done.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

It's no surprise that artists and writers were among the first to be inspired by the natural beauty of the Hamptons. It's also no surprise that celebrities, hangers-on, and wannabees followed soon after. What some may not know is that the Hamptons exerted their draw on the creative community long before Jackson Pollock and his pals put it on the map. This book eloquently conveys the allure of this magical place and the entertaining goings-on that occur when the world's finest artists and writers intermingle.

I was given this book as a "must have" gift. So very true. The stories and photos are sublime. I'll never look at this place in the same way. Highly recommend it.

This is a challenging play which forces its audience to question the nature and meaning of love. Can love and shame coexist? Can love be given conditionally? Who defines what is normal? What is unacceptable? Welcome to the quagmire of human sexuality. "The Goat" places the audience in the jury box. The accused are Martin, his wife Stevie and their teen-age son Billy. Albee asks us to review the evidence. Who's right? Who's wrong? Who is justified? Who, or what, has been betrayed? Who is the injured party? Only after the case has been heard and the all the evidence been presented, when the issues and questions have all been debated, do we realize that this play isn't about bestiality as much as it is about intolerance, nonconformity and the absurdity and arbitrariness of societal standards. Does Albee provide any answers? No, he insists, as he always has, that you find your own. A truly great play.

When he accepted the Tony Award for Best Play in 2002, Edward Albee said he was grateful that there was room on Broadway for a play about love. In 2003 we can be grateful that Overlook Press has published The Goat, or, Who is Sylvia?

I was fortunate to see The Goat on Broadway both with the original cast (Mercedes Ruehl and Bill Pullman) and with the replacement cast (Sally Field and Bill Irwin). While both casts were superb, what was so satisfying was that the text allowed for two very different interpretations. Having now read the play, its greatness is even more apparent.

The story is a simple, though unusual, one: Martin, a successful and famous architect lives in domestic harmony with his wife Stevie and their gay son Billy. Then one day Martin falls in love with Sylvia, who happens to be a goat. Albee uses three scenes to tell his story: 1) Martin's confession to his best friend Ross about his new love; 2) Stevie's confrontation with Martin over Sylvia (whom she finds out about in a letter from Ross); and 3) the tragic, yet also hopeful (to me at least), conclusion.

In this play Albee has harnessed the wordplay of drawing room comedy to the intense emotions of tragedy. In their confrontations, Stevie and Martin switch from emotional outbusts to clever repartee and back again. They even have the wherewithal to compliment each other on their bon mots.

The audacity of this strategy and Albee's success in bringing it off, apparent on stage, become even clearer after reading the text. His intricate constructions and verbal virtuosity lend a musical feeling to the work, as if every shift of mood and emotion were part of a larger composition. Albee rings changes not only in the lives of his characters, but also in the perceptions and emotions of his audience. With this work Albee has given us a new hybrid form of drama: the drawing room tragedy. In this respect it reminds me of an earlier work, The Lady from Dubuque, which employed a similar strategy, albeit less effectively in my opinion.

This play also marks the debut "the son" as a speaking character. Sons have been part of Albee plays before: in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf he is imaginary; in A Delicate Balance dead and buried; in Three Tall Women he is a silent witness at his dying mother's bedside; and in The Play About The Baby, while he is both born and kidnapped, he is never seen (if he even exists in the first place).

But in The Goat Stevie and Martin's son Billy is a vital presence. For the first time an Albee family feels complete. The imaginary child has been given form and voice. Billy's coming to grips both with his own homsexuality and with his father's new love leads to a moment in the last scene that sent chills of delight and terror up and down my spine each time I saw it performed. Never less than theatrically potent, Albee achieves a new intensity here that was thrilling.

With The Goat Albee has given us not only one of his best works, but also one of the best plays of recent times. I must admit that I never thought any of his works could rival my affection for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. But The Goat is its equal and leaves me eagerly anticipating where Edward Albee plans on next going.

It has characters and a plot, and you could compare it with Wallace Stevens's "Arrival at the Waldorf" or Valéry's "Graveyard by the Sea," but all there is to its two acts is an evocation of the seaside---coming from town, spending the day, leaving with the tang of iodine in your nostrils.

This play, about the questions and answers of human evolution, is fascinating. It won the Pulitzer for a reason, and I highly recommend finding out that reason on your own. It's too bad this play has fallen into obscurity-- I think it is one of the best American dramas thus far. Brilliant. Read (or watch, if you get the chance) this play and shiver.

Albee's Everything in the Garden is a superb, if surreal attack on suburban complacency. In the course of an evening's house party, participants are discovered to be engaging in racism, bad business ethics, drunkeness, prostitution, and ultimately, murder. Then everyone goes home as if nothing had happened. But something has happened--the central couple, Richard and Jenny, have become financially secure, albeit at a great price. But perhaps they're happier for all this than they have ever been, at the end of a hellish evening in which many of their middle class mores have been abandoned in the name of keeping up with their Long Island neighbors (friends they wouldn't have, by the way, if they were not so well off). The story has absurd plot twists and one or two incredible coincidences, but, accepted on their own terms, these add to the general interest the play's dialogue and plot provide. This play is not performed much now, but it makes for an extraordinarily involving read.

Jack Mitchell has worked magic in transforming his photographs into works of art that explode with life. They are vibrant and alive, capturing the essence of each 'Icon and Idol'. By the very nature of celebrity we think we "know" these people. Mr. Mitchell has captured these public people by penetrating through the veneer to take us into their respective souls. His photographs are pure works of art that one never gets tired of viewing.

A work of Proustian depth and elegance, these letters from John Joseph to Patricia Larsen mark and illuminate a friendship perhaps unique in 20th century America. Bound for the "classics" shelf.

The American Dream is another of Albee's many commentaries on our society. Albee saw that in every one of us there exists an ideal, the American dream. While this dream is different for us all, Albee felt that all of us simply expect our American dream to come true. This play examines the anarchy that can result from the realization that life just doesn't work the way we all imagine it can. Albee's goal is to make us all more aware of the way we think, so that we may alter it to be more correct and fulfilled. This play is not for a reader looking for entertainment. The lack of humanity in the play makes it a very abstract piece, obviously aimed at conveying a point rather than a story.

Zoo Story

There is something unique about the works of Edward Albee, a kind of mood, or wry-but-not-entirely-dry attitude, one recognizes but can't quite put his finger on. This "story" of a suburbanite with two daughters minding his own business on a park bench who is accosted by a poorer but somehow wiser man who has been at the zoo was Edward Albee's first play to be seen by the public. Dating from 1958, the one-act play, which like much of Albee's work seems to deftly mix absurdist elements with an intimate rendering of the American bourgoisie--and a sort of silent, if perhaps ironical, nod to mystical Christianity--he reminds me of a dramaturgic Saint Francis of Assisi--was first seen in Berlin. As in Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolf? and The Goat, the object of desire is off stage, at least until the end, at which point "its" "retrieval" reveals a generalized dissatisfaction which the playwright allows to be dispersed as satisfaction after all, in conformity with the peculiarities of human desire and the conventions of literary endings. This two-man play seems to work largely because the older, more well-to-do man, Peter-a kind of icon of smug suburbanite self-satisfaction, who wants to be entertained, as it were, from the outside--is drawn in--across the white picket fence, or here, the green slatted Central Park bench--to the life of the slightly younger Jerry--a sort of stand--in it would seem for the playwrite, and his dramatic task to involve us all in a participatory experience this side--or perhaps a little more--of religion.

The American Dream

Although I have read/seen only four of Albee's works (Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolf, Zoo Story, and The Goat), this seems to me the work of his that owes most to-or is closest to- the theater of the absurd-particularly to Samuel Beckett. And yet, as the title suggests, the work is far more American-down home, you might say-and so is the humor. The main characters are "Mommy," "Daddy" and "Grandma"-and Grandma is a scream. Her brilliant, if irascible, wit contains some brilliant, if not exactly unbiased, observations on the treatment of, expectations from, and inner reality of, the elderly. She comes off as the most intelligent person in the play, and the one we identify with the most-even if her metaphysical capacities for hiding objects, forgetting who her strumpet daughter is, and desiring with spiritual ardor the flesh of the young who may or may not be her own are not necessarily everyone's instantiation of satisfaction's successful pursuit.

I saw this play done by a small group of high school students the past year and it is perhaps one of the best plays I've ever seen. Edward Albee has mastered the art of Absurdest.

I have been studying the plays of Edward Albee, for three months. This play and the Zoo Story have me think about life and self, more then anything I have read in years. Albee is able to portray in an unsual way his true feelings about his background as well as his atitude towards the characters that he portrays. I want his plays to go on and on! The characters are very real, and for the most part very sad.Life goes on in the real world even with people that he portrays being a part of it.

Once I figured out what the play was about I really enjoyed it, before I just thought it was very good and quite amusing. The fact of figuring it out actually makes the play more interesting is a sign of a genius playwrite and incredible / timeless story.

I saw "Three Tall Women" at the contemporary arts center in new orleans two summers ago. It was simply brilliant. I was living across the street from Albee when he was in the city working on "Fragments." Unfortunately I didn't get to see the show or get the opportunity to meet him in person. His ability to evoke so much emotion from the viewer astounded me. I was crying a LOT...during this play. Edward Albee is an extremely clever man.