Howard Miller takes a look at Three Tall Women:
No other playwright has been able to capture the pulsating anxiety, the gallows humor, and even the embracing allure of death the way Edward Albee has done through so many of his works. It might appear in a human guise, as in The Sandbox, where a good-looking young man performing calisthenics becomes the Angel of Death into whose arms Grandma happily falls. It may take on a near-palpable form of dread as it slithers into the upscale suburban home of a middle-aged couple in A Delicate Balance. It can show up as an unexpected act of violence, as it does in At Home at the Zoo, or in a story about the loss of a child in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. But nowhere do we see such a total package of biting humor, trepidation, bitterness, and a longing for death as we do in Albee's Three Tall Women, opening tonight at the Golden Theatre in a staggering revival that marks the return of Glenda Jackson to Broadway after a 30-year hiatus. . . . |
