Edward Albee's Tiny Alice: A Note of Re-examination

EDWARD ALBEE'S TINY ALICE:' A NOTE OF RE-EXAMINATION EDWARD ALBEE'S Tiny Alice SUSTAINS neither the acute artistic control nor the consummate theatrical dialogue of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf or the Zoo Story~ but it attempts to be more metaphysically provocative than either. And in the 1964-1965 New York production the attempt was successful. (However, the compensating talents of a John Gielgud, an Irene Worth, a William Hutt were, in Tiny Alice, more necessary to support the somewhat shaky substratum and camouflage the plethora of superficial quips-that so often pass for deeply probing comments on being-than, say, an Arthur Hill and an Uta Hagen were essential to the success of Virginia Woolf.) In this drama perhaps more profundity is attempted than in any of Mr. Albee's other plays; less is actually realized-at least on the printed page. Mr. Albee's success rests on his superior reinforcement of the verbal with the visual. Tiny A lice is neither the modern masterpiece nor the muddled failure that conflicting critics have acclaimed it. I am not convinced of the high quality of the "powerful statements" the play makes "about the nature of ... ["symbolic"] transcendence and the world which induces some to attempt it."l I am not sure that one must plumb the depths of Eros or Thanatos or the psychoanalytic concept of ambivalence2 to grasp those timeless paradoxes in the struggles of the religious devotee reiterated by Mr. Albee. Nor am I convinced that a "genuine catharsis is achieved for the audience . . . final proof of the tragic magnitude of Tiny AIice."3 Tiny Alice is teasingly (often irritatingly) ingenious and, by the standards of the last decade, it is a good play; but even by these standards it is certainly not a great one. Mere self-conscious cleverness and studied wit seldom remain impervious to the corrosion of prolonged scrutiny. What is more, a playwright must at least stay abreast of those significant authors he 1 See Lee Baxandall's "The Theater of Edward Albee" in Tulane Drama Review , Vol. 9. No. 4 (Summer 1965), pp. 19-40 . 2 Mr. Thomas B. Marcus makes such high claims for Tiny Alice in "Tiny A.lice and Tragic Catharsis." Educational Theatre' Journal, XVII, pp. 225-233 (October, 1965). 3 For a brief but interesting psychological interpretation see Abraham N. Franzblau 's "A Psychiatrist Looks at Tiny Alice," Saturday Review (January 30, 1965) p. 39· 54 1968 ALBEE'S Ti11lyAlice S5 happens to imitate if he desires to make more than ephemeral observations on man in his interplay with his God, his society, and himself. Throughout Tiny Alice reverberate familiar echoes of past drama and fiction. Some of Albee's analogues seem deliberate, others may be coincidental; but most similarities merely call attention to precursory achievements considerably greater than the ones at hand. Franz Kafka probed more deeply into man's inner torment, partially through his organic use of that mysterious castle around which one seemed to discover less about the identity of "God" than the sense of man's own guiltlessness in guilt. And, in The Trial~ Joseph K's gradual, inexorable movement toward his own assassination and the chilling violence of the act itself are more thoughtfully gripping than the nervously prolonged demise of Brother Julian (however artistically prepared for). Shakespeare's Ha.mlet and The Tempest~ PirandelIo's Six Characters in Search of an Author and Henry IV~ all involve plunges into the bottomless sea of appearance and reality that make Albee's use of masks and castles within castles seem less ambitious. Lewis Carroll's Alice explores more pointedly the ambivalances and ambiguities of man's universe. Aldous Huxley's remarks about the nature of reality involving an infinite series of ever-diminishing men on Quaker Oats boxes holding Quaker Oats boxes add to the issue the freshness of modernity that Albee's castle motif lacks. But what of Mr. Albee's inability to open new avenues in man's ontological pursuits? One does not censure Mr. Albee for failure to achieve the intellectual or artistic excellence of Shakespeare or Pirandello . The question to be asked centers around the manner in which...