In this Jan. 27, 1977, photo, playwright Edward Albee, left, makes a point as director Paul Weidner, center, and actress Angela Lansbury look on during a news conference in Hartford, Connecticut. (AP Photo/File)

In this Jan. 27, 1977, photo, playwright Edward Albee, left, makes a point as director Paul Weidner, center, and actress Angela Lansbury look on during a news conference in Hartford, Connecticut. (AP Photo/File)

Acclaimed playwright Edward Albee dies at 88

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, who challenged theatrical convention in masterworks such as “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “A Delicate Balance,” died Friday, his personal assistant said. He was 88.

He died at his home in Montauk, east of New York, assistant Jackob Holder said. No cause of death was immediately given, although he had suffered from diabetes. With the deaths of Arthur Miller and August Wilson in 2005, he was arguably America’s greatest living playwright.

Several years ago, before undergoing extensive surgery, Albee penned a note to be issued at the time of his death: “To all of you who have made my being alive so wonderful, so exciting and so full, my thanks and all my love.”

Albee was proclaimed the playwright of his generation after his blistering “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” opened on Broadway in 1962. The Tony-winning play, still widely considered Albee’s finest, was made into an award-winning 1966 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

The play’s sharp-tongued humor and dark themes were the hallmarks of Albee’s style. In more than 30 plays, Albee skewered such mainstays of American culture as marriage, child-rearing, religion and upper-class comforts.

“If you have no wounds, how can you know you’re alive?” a character asks in Albee’s 1996 “The Play About the Baby.”

“It’s just a quirk of the brain that makes one a playwright,” Albee said in 2008. “I have the same experiences that everybody else does, but… I feel the need to translate a lot of what happens to me, a lot of what I think, into a play.”

Albee challenged audiences to question their assumptions about society and about theater itself. He did it with humor and a sense of linguistic delight, using withering barbs and word play to hint at deeper meaning.

Praise for the playwright came from far and wide on Twitter after his death. Mia Farrow, who was in a staged reading of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” called Albee “one of the great” playwrights “of our time.” Michael McKean wrote: “There was only one Edward Albee. #Irreplaceable.” Playwright Lynn Nottage wrote: “I will miss his wit, irreverence &wisdom. He enlivened the theatre landscape.”

Albee’s unconventional style won him great acclaim but also led to a nearly 20-year drought of critical and commercial recognition before his 1994 play, “Three Tall Women,” garnered his third Pulitzer Prize. His other Pulitzers were for “A Delicate Balance” (1967) and “Seascape” (1975).

Many of his productions in the years after “Seascape” were savaged by the press as inconsequential trickery, a shadow of his former works. But after “Three Tall Women,” a play he called an “exorcising of demons,” he had several major productions, including “The Play About the Baby” and “The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?” which won him his second Tony for best play in 2002.

Many of his works had similar things in common: domestic rancor inflamed by booze, a sense of unknown anxiety, a lost child who creates a marital friction and precise but flailing language that alternates between comic and profound.

In interviews, Albee recoiled at the idea of drawing parallels between his works or between his cynical outlook and his unhappy childhood.

“Each play of mine has a distinctive story to tell,” he told The Santa Fe New Mexican in 2001.

Albee was born in 1928 and was adopted by a wealthy suburban New York couple. His father, Reed Albee, ran the Keith-Albee chain of vaudeville theaters; his mother, Frances Albee, was a socialite and a commanding presence who kept a hold on him for much of his life.

Estranged from his parents, Albee moved to New York and worked as a messenger for Western Union before gaining notice with “The Zoo Story,” a one-act play written in 1958 about two strangers meeting on a bench in Central Park.

With “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and 1964’s “Tiny Alice,” Albee shook up a Broadway that had been dominated by Tennessee Williams, Miller and their intellectual disciples.

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” presents an all-night drinking bout in which a middle-age professor and his wife verbally spar and unravel their illusions during a visit by a younger couple. It won five Tonys including best play, actor (Arthur Hill) and actress (Uta Hagen), and the film version won five Oscars including best actress (Taylor) and supporting actress (Sandy Dennis).

Albee also directed the American premieres of many of his plays, starting with “Seascape” in 1975. “Seascape” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” were revived on Broadway in 2005, and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” was revived on Broadway again in 2013. “A Delicate Balance” was revived a year later, starring Glenn Close.

Albee brought back “The Zoo Story” to startling effect in 2007 with “Edward Albee’s Peter and Jerry.” The shattering encounter between two strangers in a park that is “The Zoo Story” became the second act of the new work. The first act was based on Albee’s much later “Homelife.”

It was one of a number of fruitful productions around the time Albee turned 80 in 2008.

That year saw the world premiere of his play about identical twins, “Me, Myself and I”; a New York revival of two of his early one-act classics, “The American Dream” and “The Sandbox”; and the premiere of “Edward Albee’s Occupant,” about sculptor Louise Nevelson and the cult of celebrity.

Albee was honored by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1996 for his lifetime contributions. Then-President Bill Clinton praised Albee as a man who inspired a generation of American dramatists. Clinton also awarded Albee a National Medal of the Arts that year.

Into his 70s, Albee continued to write provocative and unconventional plays. In “The Goat or Who is Sylvia?” the main character falls in love with a goat.

Albee’s longtime companion, sculptor Jonathan Thomas, died in 2005.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Local News

Customers enter and exit the Costco on Dec. 2, 2022, in Lake Stevens. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Costco stores could be impacted by looming truck driver strike threat

Truck drivers who deliver groceries and produce to Costco warehouses… Continue reading

Two Washington State ferries pass along the route between Mukilteo and Clinton as scuba divers swim near the shore Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023, in Mukilteo, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Ferry system increases ridership by a half million in 2024

Edmonds-Kingston route remains second-busiest route in the system.

Want coffee? Drink some with the Marysville mayor.

A casual question-and-answer session between mayor and constituents is planned for March 24.

Judge sentences man for role in human smuggling ring

Jesus Ortiz-Plata was arrested in Everett in May 2024. A U.S. District Court judge sentenced him to 15 months in prison.

Bill Wood, right, Donnie Griffin, center right, and Steve Hatzenbeler, left, listen and talk with South County Fire Chief Bob Eastman, center left, during an Edmonds Civic Roundtable event to discuss the RFA annexation on Monday, Feb. 10, 2025 in Edmonds, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Edmonds community discusses annexation into the regional fire authority

About 100 residents attended the Edmonds Civic Roundtable discussion in preparation for the April special election.

Robin Cain with 50 of her marathon medals hanging on a display board she made with her father on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025 in Lake Stevens, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Running a marathon is hard. She ran one in every state.

Robin Cain, of Lake Stevens, is one of only a few thousand people to ever achieve the feat.

People line up to grab food at the Everett Recovery Cafe on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Coffee, meals and compassion are free at the Everett Recovery Cafe

The free, membership-based day center offers free coffee and meals and more importantly, camaraderie and recovery support.

Devani Padron, left, Daisy Ramos perform during dance class at Mari's Place Monday afternoon in Everett on July 13, 2016. (Kevin Clark / The Herald)
Mari’s Place helps children build confidence and design a better future

The Everett-based nonprofit offers free and low-cost classes in art, music, theater and dance for children ages 5 to 14.

The Everett Wastewater Treatment Plant along the Snohomish River on Thursday, June 16, 2022 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Everett water, sewer rates could jump 43% by 2028

The rate hikes would pay for improvements to the city’s sewer infrastructure.

The bond funded new track and field at Northshore Middle School on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024 in Bothell, Washington. (Courtesy of Northshore School District)
Northshore School District bond improvements underway

The $425 million bond is funding new track and field complexes, playgrounds and phase one of two school replacements.

Timothy Evans, a volunteer at the east Everett cold weather shelter, with his dog Hammer on Monday, Feb. 10 in Everett, Washington. (Will Geschke / The Herald)
Temporary shelter opens in Everett during unusually cold weather

The shelter will open nightly until Feb. 14. Help is needed at the new location, as well as six others across the county.

Outside of the updated section of Lake Stevens High School on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020 in Lake Stevens, Wa. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Lake Stevens schools bond leading early; Arlington voters reject latest levy attempt

A $314 million bond looks to pass while Arlington’s attempts to build a new Post Middle School again appear to take a step back.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.