50 Years of Albee

The critic Ben Brantley wrote about Edward Albee this week in the New York Times:

Edward Albee never expected or even wanted you to like his plays. “Like” is too pale and friendly a word for the red-blooded emotions he hoped to elicit. Rage and bewilderment, fear and loathing and that grand old Aristotelian couple, pity and terror: These were all welcome and entirely appropriate responses to have in the theater of Mr. Albee, one of the genuinely great dramatists of the last century, who died on Friday at 88.

Read the rest of this excellent article HERE.

Thinking about Edward Albee this week since his death, remembering the impact of seeing my first Albee play, Zoo Story, through the half century of triumphs and transcendence of his greatest works like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, A Delicate Balance, Three Tall Women and all the rest, I remembered the thrill when, as a young actor, I was allowed to watch him work with Angela Lansbury and William Prince in the US premiere of his play, Counting the Ways at Hartford Stage Company. He was terrifying, contentious, demanding, funny and brilliant. It's wrenching that he is no longer alive, but boy did he give us our money's worth while he was. Thank you, Mr. Albee.