| . | 04/08/2008
The American Dream & The Sandbox
By: Victor Gluck
Kathleen Butler, Judith Ivey, Harmon Walsh and George Bartenieff
in a scene from Edward Albee’s The American Dream
(photo credit: Gabe Evans)
As a kind of 80th birthday present to himself, playwright Edward Albee has been given a chance to direct two of his earliest one-act plays at the Cherry Lane Theatre where his plays were first seen almost five decades ago. The American Dream and The Sandbox seem like an obvious pairing as they share most of the same characters, but these plays have usually been presented with other companion pieces, such as The Zoo Story. In fact, this may be the first time the two plays have been seen together in New York City. Two-time Tony Award winner Judith Ivey leads a cast of veterans and newcomers in these now classic satires on the American scene from the Eisenhower era in this entertaining and satiric evening.
In this season when Albee has had major productions of both old and new plays being produced in the New York area (Peter and Jerry having its New York premiere at The Second Stage; the world premiere of Me, Myself and I at the McCarter Theater, Princeton; The Occupant returning to the Signature Theater after its 2002 opening was canceled due to Anne Bancroft’s illness; as well as the current double bill), it is instructive to look back at where he started his distinguished career. The Sandbox and The American Dream date from 1959 and 1960, respectively. One of the problems with pairing them is that although they share the same characters, The Sandbox which should come second chronologically takes only 15 minutes, which puts the hour long play first. However, as Albee has always been known to take risks in the theater, this can be seen as no longer a problem.
As a director Albee has always had a leisurely hand. If memory serves, his 1976 Broadway revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Colleen Dewhurst and Ben Gazzara ran three and a half hours. The new double bill is also leisurely paced but as a pair of satiric comedies it is not inappropriate. However, the evening might have been funnier at a faster tempo. What is fascinating about these one acts for anyone who knows his later and more complex work is that all the preoccupations and pet peeves are already apparent in these early works: the bitchy wife, the retiring husband, the uninvited guest, the missing son, the introspective senior citizen, loveless marriages, and the emptiness and hollowness of contemporary American life. Even at the outset of his career, Albee enjoyed making the bourgeoisie uncomfortable in the theater.
The American Dream is heavily influenced by Eugene Ionesco and the Absurdist school of drama that was all the rage when Albee wrote this play. In the published version, Albee says that “the play is an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, emasculation and vacuity.” All was not well with 1960 America and Albee took it to task to reveal the growing cracks in the façade. While time has taken some of the sting out of the satire, the play is still an amusing absurdist take on American establishment culture.
In Neil Patel’s red, white and blue living room, wallpapered with American flag decorations, sit childless Mommy (Ivey) and Daddy (George Bartenieff) awaiting visitors who are late. Mommy banters on about rude sales people and broken plumbing, hardly ever letting Daddy get a word in. Grandma (Lois Markle) enters and is threatened with the “van man” if she doesn’t behave, but she is not as senile as believed and gives as good as she gets. Mrs. Barker from the Bye-Bye Adoption Service arrives to help with finding a suitable son to replace one who did not work out. When the hunky candidate arrives, Grandma takes him for the mythical “van man” but finds him most considerate instead. Albee uses this framework to satirize middle class morality and empty platitudes of daily life.
Ivey is rather low key and mellow as the domineering Mommy, the prototype of Martha and all such later women in Albee. However, her interpretation is successful nevertheless, as is Bartenieff’s almost catatonic husband, brow-beaten into submission after years of marriage to Mommy. Replacing an ailing Myra Carter who withdrew from the cast just before opening night, Lois Markle’s Grandma seems almost too hale and hearty to be under the thumb of Mommy. Kathleen Butler as Mrs. Barker, the first of Albee’s many intrusive guests from the couple in A Delicate Balance to the “Lady from Dubuque,” gets a certain amount of mileage out of the things she is asked to do. Making his Off Broadway debut as the Young Man, Harmon Walsh is suitably vapid and self-involved.
Jesse Williams, Lois Markle, Daniel Shevlin, Judith Ivey and
George Bartenieff in a scene from Edward Albee’s The Sandbox
(photo credit: Jaisen Crockett/ArtMeetsCommerce)
The Sandbox, the shorter of the two plays, is actually more powerful in its succinct message. Here Mommy and Daddy (mostly Mommy) have decided to act on their plans of getting rid of Grandma and have taken her to the beach where she is placed in a sandbox. A young man in a tuxedo plays a cello for the death watch, while another young man dressed only in swimming trunks performs calisthenics. We hear Grandma’s thoughts as Mommy and Daddy wait for her to expire, and her communion with the athlete who turns out to be there to help her with her transition to the next world.
The play, dedicated to Albee’s own grandmother, is a chilling reminder of how many of the elderly are treated in the United States, with the old age home used as a “sandbox” for the unwanted. Daniel Shevlin plays the lovely, sad music of William Flanagan, while another debuting actor, the lithe Jesse Williams, is decidedly eerie as the athlete who is in reality the angel of death. Patel’s setting is more symbolic and stylized for this play, while Carrie Robbins’ color-coordinated costumes for The American Dream give way to funereal black.
In a theater season whose overall theme has evolved into dramas of dysfunctional families, The American Dream and The Sandbox are right at home. Long before his depiction of the marriages in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Delicate Balance, All Over, and The Goat, Edward Albee was taking a scalpel to American family life. It is good to have these modern classics back on stage.
The American Dream & The Sandbox (through May 17)
Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street, off of Seventh Ave. So., in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or http://www.telecharge.com
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