I am one of the few who saw the original Broadway production of this play in 1980 (it ran for 12 performances.) I thought it a brilliant work, though neither pleasant nor reassuring in its treatment of our inability to prevent a horrible death, in this case from cancer, or to alleviate its pain. The pain here is central and omnipresent: not only the victim’s physical pain but also the awful pain of loss.
One wouldn’t expect the author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Tiny Alice and A Delicate Balanceto find comfort in faith or solace in relationships with loved ones. However, there is bitter hilarity in the stupid hurtfulness of the friends gathered here and the devastating retaliations that result.
Act I has them all literally playing games at least as meanly as we recall from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’s “Get the Guests” and “Humiliate the Host.” Surprisingly, though, the genuine love between the heartbroken husband and his excruciatingly dying wife demands our intense dramatic involvement. By the end of the act, after Jo, the wife, has been forced to drop all her defenses and can only scream horribly in direct animal urgency, Sam, her frantic husband, carries her up the symbolically huge, twisting staircase with great delicacy, both of them in tears. At that point, the mysterious Lady of the title enters with an elegant, imposing black man, her assistant; and all we can hope is that they can somehow offer help.
I suppose that they do, in a sense. Elizabeth, who identifies herself first as Jo’s mother and later simply as “the Lady from Dubuque,” embraces Jo and strokes her hair and quiets her. Oscar, her helper, physically intimidates Sam and the friends who all return to check on Jo and indulge their own whims. Little else happens, as Jo retreats into virtual oblivion and is carried upstairs to die, except that Sam – trying in frustration to expel the intruders and get to his wife -- is knocked unconscious, tied up and variously physically abused by some of the oafish folk who choose to aid Oscar, not their old friend. Finally the others make graceless exits, Oscar and Elizabeth come down and tell Sam that “it is over”; and at least Jo is at peace as Sam remains distraught.
The other peculiar behaviors mostly enrich the entertainment and contrast with the dignity of Sam and Jo. Thomas J. Ryan plays Sam’s friend Edgar as likably as he can, but Edgar is clearly a loser, and like his more lively wife Lucinda, not the intellectual equal of his friend. Proximity seems to have made friends of Sam and Edgar, Jo and Lucinda; though Catherine Curtin’s Lucinda has more individual sparkle.
Carol, played with a good deal of sexy charm by Tricia Paoluccio, is the girlfriend of Sam’s really questionable “friend,” Fred, a loudmouthed brute whom she teases that she will refuse to marry; none of the others want her to marry him.
The always satisfying Laila Robins is lovely as Jo. With really subtle control, she makes Jo’s mood-swings and suffering pitiable, yet she’s so real and appealing that her in-no-way theatrical screams gave me the shivers. Michael Hayden has more kinds of suffering to convey, often without words or actions, than anyone else in the cast, yet he somehow maintains a feeling of understatement. I hadn’t seen this quite experienced, handsome actor before, but he must be much in demand. Peter Francis James looks great as Elizabeth’s assistant Oscar, elegantly dressed and also amusingly sexy in Sam’s nightshirt, but I got little of the suggestion that he, like Elizabeth, was a more-than-human creature, as the original Oscar, the great Earle Hyman, did make him. Jane Alexander is expectedly grand and imposing as Elizabeth, the “Lady from Dubuque” (an old New Yorker joke term). She’s queenly in a white gown; but the actress is always able to exude a charming reality, heroic or villainous, no matter what role she plays.
The title character and her aide are otherworldly creatures, mystical Assistors at the end of this woman’s life. And seeing this play again, I have come to reassess my initial discomfort with it – which all centered on what seemed to me to be the unnecessarily cruel way that everyone treated the decent, loving husband. Nothing about this excellent revival, directed with a sure hand by David Esbjornson, changed my mind; the superb premiere production did not distort it. But age and greater familiarity with suffering and death have perhaps illuminated Albee’s focus for me.
I remember a conversation about a man whose untimely death upset Albee who said that whatever the accompanying concerns might be, the man’s death was all that mattered to deal with. He doesn’t like to explain his plays, but I take that remark to explain my problem with this one. Even if the play is about Sam and his agony, he needed to be stilled to allow his wife to die without interference. Albee had already written about the irrelevance of others at the time of death in his most underrated play, All Over.
His next play is reported to be about birth: I wouldn’t imagine that there will be much that’s familiar and expected in that one, either.
