Albee's 'Women' Masterfully Combines Three Lives

After a string of plays not well received by either the critics or the public, Edward Albee returns with a play equal to his greatest successes. His early plays included such celebrated works as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Zoo Story and A Delicate Balance. With Three Tall Women, now playing at Boston's Colonial Theatre after an off-Broadway run in New York, Albee has deservedly won his third Pulitzer Prize. The play is about his adoptive mother, with whom he had a hostile relationship, yet the tone is reconciliatory, not spiteful. In an attempt to understand his mother after her death, Albee has created a flesh-and-blood portrait of a woman at the end of her life and the experiences which shaped her.

Albee calls this woman "A," and in the first act we see her, a rich and somewhat senile nonagenarian, ensconced in her room with its elegant furnishings and silver tea service. She is joined by B, her hired companion, and C, the young woman lawyer who is trying to straighten out the elderly woman's finances. In the second act, B and C become earlier incarnations of A, and the three--now all one woman, at different stages of her life--open up to each other, and to the audience. It is a brilliant coup de theatre, which first presents A from the outside and then allows us to view her from the inside.

In the first half of the play, A is a dotty old woman, a shadow of her former self, though the stories she recounts intimate what she was like when she was younger. Traces remain of the imperious manner, regal bearing and caustic wit, but they are interspersed with instances of memory loss, sudden fits of tears and humiliating moments of incontinence. At the close of the act, she suffers a stroke. In the second act, the full character is fleshed out, as B and C reappear in 1950s and 1920s dress, respectively. The dowdyish assistant has become the sophisticated, fiftyish A, full of confidence; the cynical young lawyer is now the naive and romantic 26-year-old A. While a mannequin with an oxygen mask lies in the bed upstage, A herself returns onstage-- no longer senile and sickly, she is in control and able to fully speak her thoughts and able to fully speak her thoughts and share the wisdom possessed upon reaching the final stage of her life.

These three who make up the same individual share their thoughts, echoing the stories told by A in the first act, and reveal to each other how C will become B and then, in turn, how B will change into A. C learns that in two years she will meet her husband--who will cheat on her--and that she will have a son--who she will estrange and drive away. B finds out that her husband will soon die of cancer and that her son returns, after more than 20 years.

This theatrical device allows Albee to explore a central issue of aging: Which is our true self--the person we start out as or the person we become? Or does it lie somewhere in the middle? Of course, they all combine to form one person, but C is aghast to see what she will become and A is bemused by her younger, idealistic self, while B shares both vantage points. C cries out, "I will not become you! I deny you!" A responds, "You all deny me. Well, I deny you all."

Marian Seldes created the role of B in New York and then, appropriately enough, switched to the role of A when the original actress left. As A in this production, she gives an incredibly moving performance, at once domineering and endearing, her angular and expressive face reflecting the character's wide range of emotions. She manages to make these sudden shifts in mood completely believable and captures A's pain and terror at growing old.

The young lawyer, as written by Albee, is consistently antagonistic and too intolerant of A's harmless prejudices. When A refers to "smart, little Jews" and black servants knowing their place, C sputters ridiculously, "I'm a Democrat!" This complete lack of understanding of the vagaries which accompany old age seems inappropriate in a 26-year-old. However, this hostility forms a good contrast to the hopeful young beauty of the second act. Christina Rouner gives a satisfactory performance, but she overplays both the toughness of the first act and the lightness of the second. Due to the flat tonality of her voice and a certain awkwardness, she does not make a very convincing coquette.

The double perspective of B does not come across as well. Michael Learned is so self-assured and comfortable in the first act that, when she dons pearls and a stylish dress in the second act, except for a slightly more sophisticated and strict demeanor, she is basically the same. A major casting problem is Learned's physical appearance: she is not tall but instead rather shorter and squatter than both Seldes and Rouner. This takes away from the title and disturbs the continuity of the three in the second act. Still, Learned's performance is quite enjoyable, especially in the first act, in which she and Seldes play off of each other marvelously.

Under the direction of Lawrence Sacharow, who received the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Direction for the New York production, the actresses utilize the entire space of the stage. The movements never appear overly staged or aimless; every action is natural and has a purpose. In the play's second act, the three women remain downstage as, behind them, the son sits at his mother's bedside. He remains mute the entire time, allowing the focus to stay on the three voices of this one woman. In reality, though, this son is Albee and the three voices are his, the voice of the playwright. At last, the son is in control of his mother's fate. The result is a brilliant and sensitive play, superbly presented in the current production. All theater buffs are urged to go see Three Tall Women, a highlight of recent theater.