Critical Essays on Edward Albee ed. by Philip C. Kolin and J. Madison Davis (review)

124 Book Reviews (page 54) and that Albee typically uses a "quartet" of characters whose long speeches function like "arias." Examining specific plays, McCarthy sees Box as a "musical fantasia" (page 40) and judges the games in Lady to be like "musical movements," or variations. The final view of Albee to emerge from McCarthy's study is not entirely consistent with the playwright's own view of his work. A few times (e.g.• page 120) McCarthy concedes that Albee's vision is optimistic, positive, but overall he sees more clouds than sunlight in Albee's world. The last word needs to go to Albee who has said "writing is an act of optimism." PHILIP C, KOLIN. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI PHILIP C. KOLIN AND J. MADISON DAVIS, eds. Critical Essays on Edward Albee. Boston: O.K. Hall & Co. 1986. pp. 222. $35.00. A volume in the Critical Essays on American Literature series, this collection, edited by Philip C. Kolin and J. Madison Davis, makes an excellent contribution to Albee scholarship. The rationale for preparing this critical collection, the editors explain, is Albee's importance: "one of the most controversial playwrights ofour time" and "liked or disliked, excoriated or glorified, original or imitative," Albee is "the major playwright in the United States in the last quarter century." For this book the editors sought to select "the most significant, well written, and provocative commentaries on Albee's work" and to organize the criticism "so that one can grasp the many directions critical theory on Albee has taken." This collection contains Kolin and Davis's introduction, 36 reviews and essays, a new interview with Albee, and an annotated bibliography of Albee interviews. The forty-page introduction is, as James Nagel (general editor of the series) claims, "the most comprehensive bibliographic essay ever published on Albee." Ilis very useful in its extensive but succinct survey of Albee scholarship. This thoroughly-documented introductory essay includes, first, a section on "Research Tools for Albee Scholarship," which assesses existing bibliographies of both primary and secondary works and asserts the need for more bibliographic research. Other sections in the introduction are "Book-Length Studies on Albee"; ...Absurdism' and Albee"; and separate surveys of The Zoo Story, "Three Short Plays" [The American Dream, The Sandbox, and The Death oj Bessie Smith], Who's Afraid oj Virginia Woolf!. Tiny Alice, A Delicate Balance; and briefer surveys of Box~Mao-Box, Seascape and All Over, and "The Most Recent Works" (including The Man Who Had Three Arms). After the introduction appear 16 reviews, including three (two of The Zoo Story and one of The Death ojBessie Smith) translated from the German (Die Welt) for the first time. Among the reprinted reviews are those by Clive Barnes, Robert Brnstein, John Gassner, Brendan Gill, Walter Kerr, and Jack Kroll. The next section, "Albee and World Theater," includes 8 essays dealing with Albee's relationship to Theater of the Book Reviews 125 Absurd, naturalism, existentialism. Greek drama, and to specific writers (for example, Euripides, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Eugene O'Neill ). Critics whose work is represented here include C.W.E. Bigsby, Brian Way. Martin Esslin, James Neil Harris, and Gilbert Debusscher. Following those selections are 12 critical essays, including Ruby Cohn's "The Verbal Murders of Edward Albee," from her Dialogue ill American Drama; Anne Paolucci's "Exorcisms: Who's Afraid a/Virginia Woolf'? from her From Tension to Tonic: The Plays ofEdward Albee; and articles such as Sharon D. Spencer's "Edward Albee: The Anger Artist" (from Forum). Topics treated in these essays are Theater of the Absurd, social protest, satiric caricature, Camp. and "Sick" humor. This section also includes a new essay. written expressly for this volume. Using galleys provided by Albee himself, Matthew C. Roudane, in "A Monologue ofCruelty; Edward Albee's The Man WhaHad Three Arms" (the fITst published critical essay on this play), discusses Pirandellian influences, the theme of instant media celebrity, and Albee's connections with Artaud's Theater of Cruelty. The final section of the collection is entitled "Albee on Albee." It contains Matthew C. Roudane's interview, again conducted expressly for this volume, which has Albee discourse about his desire for the audience's "state...