Albee in Performance (review)

Should a playwright direct his own work? Many directors would say that playwrights are usually not objective enough about their work to be effective directors. Moreover, they aren't trained as directors, nor experienced enough as actors to direct effectively. Yet there are a number of important playwrights who have been effective at mounting successful theatrical realizations of their scripts: Bertold Brecht, George Bernard Shaw, Noël Coward, David Mamet, Neil LaBute and David Hare, among others. Since 1961, Edward Albee has directed first productions and revivals of his plays in regional theatres and in New York. Rakesh H. Solomon's Albee in Performance is not only a detailed description of his process as director but also an argument in favor of playwrights directing their own work. The book is a culmination of three decades of Solomon's work. During that time, the author has followed the rehearsal process of fifteen of Albee's productions, interviewing the playwrights, actors, and designers of each, as well as several other productions in which Albee, though not serving as a director, has taken an active role in the rehearsal process.

If, as Solomon repeatedly avers—and who in theatre does not agree?—the produced play is the complete work of art and the script is merely "the arrangement of words [a playwright] must substitute for his conception,” to quote (as he does) J. L. Styan, then it is not surprising that Edward Albee would want artistic control over the entire production of his work. Even before he became a director, Albee exercised his right as playwright, protected by the standard Dramatists Guild contract, to approve casting, design and directorial choices, and even to fire the director. He first directed revivals of works initially directed by others "to set the record straight”—to present the plays as he, the playwright, understood them when he wrote them. Later he directed premieres of new works. Albee sees the director's primary function as realizing the author's intention and, if that is the case, then no one is in a better position to do that on his work than he is. Albee's position assumes, of course, that there is only one correct approach to his work.

After an introductory chapter and a chapter on Albee's casting and preparation for rehearsals, Solomon devotes seven chapters to Albee's direction instead of his plays (The American Dream, The Zoo Story, Fan and Yam, The Sandbox, Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Albee directed two major Broadway revivals as well as regional theatre productions), Marriage Play, and Three Tall Women. After a chapter concluding the section on Albee's directing, Solomon offers a second section with interviews with Albee and actors and directors with whom Albee has collaborated. The most important material from these interviews has already been quoted in the main body of the work, so this second section should really be an appendix.

For many readers, the value of Albee in Performance will be the insights it gives into how Albee sees his work. Albee has already written a good deal on his plays, but here we have him focusing on the practical issues of how they should play in the theatre. Albee's approach to his work is a fascinating combination of realism and abstraction. For all their modernity and flirtation with absurdist and other nonrealistic devices, Albee sees plays like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as "absolutely naturalistic” and wants a production that is always "psychologically believable” (132). Solomon notes that Albee's approach to his work shows him to be "firmly linked to the mainstream of postwar American directing and acting, as represented by Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg, especially at the Actors Studio” (193). So, in rehearsal and performance, Albee demands that actors lose themselves in their roles, that they "become rather than . . . indicate their characters” (193). He is a stickler for understanding the subtext of every moment.

For all his interest in naturalism...