WITH rare exceptions – and here Hor ton Foote springs to mind – play wrights tend to peak in their younger years.
Not so Edward Albee, who’ll celebrate his 80th birthday March 12 with not one but four major productions of his works, new and old, this season.
Albee’s career – one that includes three Pulitzers, three Tonys (including one for lifetime achievement) and a Kennedy Center Honor – hasn’t been a consistent success. The playwright lauded for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” had a particularly rough spell in the ’80s, a decade in which he created such Broadway flops as “The Lady From Dubuque” and “The Man Who Had Three Arms” (plays that are since being reappraised).
But he regained his mojo in 1991 with the Pulitzer-winning “Three Tall Women,” and in the last decade has written such acclaimed works as “The Play About the Baby” and the controversial “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?” an allegory about bestiality.
The four upcoming productions, collectively dubbed “The Albee Season,” span the entirety of his 50-year playwriting career. First up is “Peter and Jerry,” which adds a new first act, “Homelife,” to his 1958 classic “The Zoo Story.” Starring Johanna Day, Bill Pullman and Dallas Roberts, it runs Oct. 19-Dec. 9 at off-Broadway’s Second Stage.
An entirely new work, “Me, Myself and I,” about identical twins and the mother who can’t tell them apart, receives its world pre-
miere at Princeton’s McCarter Theater (Jan. 11-Feb. 17).
F. Murray Abraham stars in a double bill of Albee’s early, disturbing one-act plays “The Sandbox” and “The American Dream” at the historic Cherry Lane Theater, where they debuted in 1961 and 1962, respectively.
Finally, the Signature will produce “The Occupant” (May 6-June 29), about sculptor Louise Nevelson. Initially slated to star Anne Bancroft, the planned production was canceled several years ago when the actress became ill. Bancroft died in 2005.
Both strongly influenced (by Beckett and Pinter, among others) and highly influential, Albee clearly ranks as one of our greatest playwrights, and this confluence of productions represents a fitting tribute.