444
MARSHALL COHEN
Winnetka will not dissipate anyone's
Angst,
and putting up with the
Plague is not the test of friendships consummated over canasta. Edna
and Harry are made to withdraw because they cannot be weighed in
the play's balance and their retreat does not signify Agnes' victory, but
Albee's defeat.
Although Albee has introduced enough material to keep Shake–
speare busy for five hours
(it
did, in fact, in
King Lear)
one gets the
impression that he is padding a rather
thin
one-act play. The dialogue
is largely concerned (and the blocking is almost exclusively concerned)
with the offering and accepting of drinks: absinthe (sticky), scotch (on
the rocks), coffee (instant) and orange juice (spilled). The rest of the
evening is filled out with the familiar Albee vaudeville (unthematic
jokes about sexual inversion, unsucce5sful ones about topless swimsuits)
and the familiar Albee obsessions (Agnes and Tobias lose a male son,
Tobias has the same sort of difficulty sustaining a love relationship
with his cat that Jerry, in
The Zoo Story,
experienced with a dog).
Almost all the good jokes are assigned to Agnes' wisecracking, alcoholic
sister Claire, and Rosemary Murphy makes them seem even better
than they are. Claire is symbolically named, as the author of
Tiny Alice
rather laboriously points out, and
if
Albee had anything to say about the
questions he raises she would obviously have been his
raissoneuse.
As it
is, she is simply Albee himself, looking everyone over and bitching every–
one up. But in a loveable, Pulitzer Prize-winning sort of a way, this
time.
