Albee, Edward (redirected from Edward Albee)

Albee, Edward (ăl`bē), 1928–, American playwright, one of the leading dramatists of his generation, b. Washington, D.C. Much of his most characteristic work constitutes an absurdist commentary on American life. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962, film 1966), a Tony Award–winner that is generally regarded as his finest play, presents an all-night drinking bout in which a middle-aged professor and his wife verbally lacerate each other in brilliant colloquial language. His major early plays include The Zoo Story (1959), The Death of Bessie Smith (1960), The Sandbox (1960), The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1963), adapted from the novel by Carson McCullers, and Tiny Alice (1965). Albee won the Pulitzer Prize for A Delicate Balance (1967), Seascape (1975), and Three Tall Women (1994). Other later plays include The Lady from Dubuque (1980), Marriage Play (1987), and The Play about the Baby (1998). In 2002 two new Albee plays debuted, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, a Tony Award–winning family tragicomedy, and Occupant, a portrait of the artist Louise Nevelson.

Bibliography

See P. C. Kolin, Conversations with Edward Albee (1987); biography by M. Gussow (1999); studies by A. Paolucci (1972) and R. E. Amacher (1982).

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Albee, Edward (Franklin)

(born March 12, 1928, Washington, D.C., U.S.) U.S. playwright. He was the adopted grandson and namesake of a well-known vaudeville theatre manager. Among his early one-act plays, The Zoo Story (1959), The Sandbox (1959), and The American Dream (1961) established him as an astute critic of American values. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962; film, 1966), his first full-length play, was widely acclaimed. Albee won Pulitzer Prizes for A Delicate Balance (1966), Seascape (1975), and Three Tall Women (1994). He also adapted other writers' works for the stage, including Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1981).

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Albee, Edward (Franklin III) (1928–  ) playwright; born in Washington, D.C. Adopted as an infant by the son of the founder of the Keith-Albee vaudeville circuit, Albee spent two years at college before quitting to work at odd jobs while he wrote plays. Zoo Story (1958) and The Death of Bessie Smith (1959) gained him considerable reputation. Albee's unhappy families and vision of tangled sexuality are best known to theater and movie audiences through his Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which opened in New York in 1962 and later became a film. Although he won Pulitzer Prizes for A Delicate Balance in 1966 and for Seascape in 1975, his critical and popular reputation never rose to fulfill its early promise.