Threaded Order Chronological Order
| re: Albee on Woolf | |
| Posted by: BruceinIthaca 04:18 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Albee on Woolf - icecadet 01:20 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
|
|
|
| I will confess I performed ALL four roles for my final performance assignment in Lilla Heston's Interpretation of Drama class at Northwestern in Fall 1976. (I did the final scene--Miss Heston said Honey was my best character--which says something about me and about Miss H.) Should I contact the Albee estate? ;) (Of course, I realize a classroom assignment is something entirely different from even a staged public reading would be. For the record, I've always taken Albee at his word--even if the times would not have allowed him to depict gay couples in a Broadway show, and his depiction of married life may be inflected by his perspective as a gay man, though not, as William Goldman would have it, "distorted" by it--God knows, LGBT folk have so much contact with heterosexual couples that we certainly don't view their social interactions as "alien" to our observations--I think, even if his original idea was to show gay coupledom (and nothing he ever said leads me to believe it was), the play simply became something different--about two heterosexual/dysfunctional marriages. To read it otherwise seems to me to make leaps the script doesn't support--Honey's hysterical pregnancy would make no sense, there would be no "revelation" that George and Martha's son was imaginary (Sorry: SPOILER!!!)--it would have been the rare gay male couple that could pass off having a son (even if adopted or the product of the previous heterosexual marriage of one of the pair) in a small 1960s college town where one of the "men" (i.e. Martha) was the openly gay son of the college president. That college president would have done everything possible to cover up such a son's sexuality and would certainly not invite "him" to be hostess at a party. The entire premise and structure of the play would be unrealistic. Given Albee, if he had wanted to write a play involving two gay male "marriages," he would either have done so later or would have talked openly about the constraints on "artists who happened to be gay" (as he probably would have preferred to be known) later. Whenever I heard him him interviewed, candor seemed like a consistent trait. |
|
| reply to this message |
| re: Albee on Woolf | |
| Posted by: ryhog 06:12 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Albee on Woolf - BruceinIthaca 04:18 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
|
|
|
| About the first, how much do you wish the smart phone had come into existence a few decades earlier? LOL About the second, I basically agree with your points. I think it is pretty clear, and he did not shy away from saying so, he was motivated to tell the stories that were of interest to him and I just don't think telling stories from a gay prism was very interesting to him. I heard him say substantially that once (albeit a lot more pithily). It is well to remember that very few people (now but certainly during his era) had gay parents so to suggest that someone with a large plateful of "parent issues" (some but certainly not all of which had anything to do with anyone being gay) to deal with in a literary way would want to do so by making straight people gay, etc., strikes me as kinda silly. One other observation: it is also well to remember that Edward did not really write "for Broadway." To be sure, there were times in his life that his work would have an easy time getting there, but I don't think he was disappointed when plays he "needed" to write didn't. (The Play About the Baby comes to mind, but there are many others.) Had he had a "gay play" floating around in the back of his head, he certainly had plenty of opportunities - long after he was "established" - to write it. |
|
| reply to this message |
| re: Albee on Woolf | |
| Posted by: BruceinIthaca 07:51 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Albee on Woolf - ryhog 06:12 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
|
|
|
| I agree that he wrote what he wanted and probably didn't spend much time when composing "tailoring" it for the bigger commercial arena of Broadway. And yes, I think some of his best work never made it to Broadway--the one-acts (especially The Zoo Story, whether in its original production or in the pairing with "Homelife," the original production of "Three Tall Women," and, as you note, "The Play About the Baby." | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: Albee on Woolf | |
| Posted by: FleetStreetBarber 11:17 am EST 01/17/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Albee on Woolf - BruceinIthaca 07:51 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
|
|
|
| Technically speaking, "The Zoo Story" did make it to Broadway, in revival. In the fall of 1968, it was paired with "Krapp's Last Tape" for a brief run at the Billy Rose (now the Nederlander). "The Death of Bessie Smith," "The American Dream"and "Box" and "Quotations from Mao Tse-Tung" were also part of the same repertory season at the Billy Rose. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
Time to render: 0.012459 seconds.