Edward Albee

News about Edward Albee, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times. More

Edward Albee, the leading American playwright of his generation, has been confounding, challenging and stimulating theater audiences for almost half a century. Since the premiere of his first staged work, "The Zoo Story" (1959), Mr. Albee has unsparingly considered subjects outside the average theatergoer's comfort zone: the capacity for sadism and violence within American society; the fluidness of human identity; the dangerous irrationality of sexual attraction and, always, the irrefutable presence of death. Born in 1928 in Washington, D.C., Mr. Albee first made his name with short, startling works including "The Sandbox" (1960) and "The American Dream" (1961) - that linked him with the European theater of the absurd. But the play that brought him international celebrity was a realistic portrait of marriage as a battlefield, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1962), a succes de scandale both on stage and (in 1966) on film. While he never matched the popular appeal of "Virginia Woolf," all of Mr. Albee's best works are notable for their probing intellectual breadth and scalpel-edged elegance of language. They include "Tiny Alice" (1965), "A Delicate Balance" (1966) and "Three Tall Women" (1994). Mr. Albee is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner. -- Ben Brantley