Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Selected Plays

Rate this book
Book by Edward Albee

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1994

Loading...
Loading...

About the author

Edward Albee

191 books587 followers
Noted American playwright Edward Franklin Albee explored the darker aspects of human relationships in plays like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) and Three Tall Women (1991), which won his third Pulitzer Prize.

People know Edward Franklin Albee III for works, including The Zoo Story , The Sandbox and The American Dream .
He well crafted his works, considered often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflected a mastery and Americanization of the theater of the absurd, which found its peak in European playwrights, such as Jean Genet, Samuel Barclay Beckett, and Eugène Ionesco. Younger Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel credits daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue of Albee with helping to reinvent the postwar theater in the early 1960s. Dedication of Albee to continuing to evolve his voice — as evidenced in later productions such as The Goat or Who Is Sylvia? (2000) — also routinely marks him as distinct of his era.

Albee described his work as "an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen."

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
3 (37%)
4 stars
4 (50%)
3 stars
1 (12%)
2 stars
0 (0%)
1 star
0 (0%)
Displaying 1 of 1 review
Profile Image for Daniel Klawitter.
Author 14 books37 followers
March 10, 2014
"Do we dislike happiness? We manufacture such a portion of our own despair...such busy folk."

So says the character Agnes in Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "A Delicate Balance."

Most of Albee's plays are dedicated to exploring the geography of contemporary despair, but with witty, literate and often quite funny dialog. He's simply one of the greatest modern American playwrights.
Displaying 1 of 1 review