The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee, and: Stretching My Mind (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee. Edited by Stephen Bottoms. Cambridge , U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 290 pp. $25.99 paperback. Stretching My Mind. By Edward Albee. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005. 294 pp. $25.00 cloth. With the recent publication of three volumes of Edward Albee’s plays by Overlook Press, the very useful, thorough, and well-organized collection of essays in The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee, beautifully edited by Stephen Bottoms, is a must-have for scholars and a¤cionados of Albee’s work. The only better companion one might have, working through these new editions of Albee ’s plays, is Albee himself, and that may be found in Albee’s own recently published collection of essays, entitled Stretching My Mind. Between these two volumes of essays one ¤nds a very interesting dialogue, intended or not, and added to the relatively small number of critical works on Albee (compared to, let’s say, Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller), both are welcome and needed companions . Included in the Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee is a chronology of Albee’s career, ¤fteen in-depth essays on his earliest to most recent plays, an exploration of his directorial work, a major interview with Albee,and an extensive bibliography. The Companion begins with Bottoms’s own detailed introduction, “The Man Who Had Three Lives,” which provides a chronological overview to Albee’s work as well as a discussion of the essays to follow. Bottoms offers a very useful triptych of Albee’s career, exploring Albee’s initial years of critical and commercial success from 1960 through 1971; followed by his years in the wilderness , from the mid-1970s to the 1980s; to his recent spate of critical and popular { 139 } acclaim following his third Pulitzer win for Three Tall Women in 1994. The essays that follow debunk common misconceptions about this American absurdist and offer varying strategies for understanding Albee’s plays, as well as insights into directing them. Several essays are standouts. The ¤rst, following the book’s quasi-chronological organization, is Philip Kolin’s discerning look at Albee’s early plays, including Zoo Story, The American Dream, and The Sandbox. Kolin provides some historical perspective on the early productions of Albee’s work in addition to investigating themes and techniques common to each of these plays. This is followed by Matthew Roudane’s essay on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which provides a deeper, far more positive look at a play that is typically given a very gloomy interpretation. John Clum’s essay uses the lens of queer theory to assess the surprising chastity in Albee’s plays and how sexuality ¤gures in Albee’s depiction of ¤zzling long-term relationships, gay or straight. This is followed by Thomas Adler’s essay on Albee’s Pulitzer Prize–winning plays, intriguingly titled “Albee’s 3 and 1/2” (a reference to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which almost received a Pulitzer), including A Delicate Balance, Seascape, and Three Tall Women, ¤nding common themes and techniques that seem to resonate in all of these award-winning plays. In another remarkable essay, Brenda Murphy looks at the form of threnody or funereal dirge in Albee’s more obscure plays, including Box-Mao-Box, All Over, and The Lady from Dubuque, and compares these plays to his triumphant end-of-life play, Three Tall Women. One of the most fascinating essays in the collection is Gerry McCarthy’s “Minding the Play: ThoughtandFeelingin Albee’s Hermetic Plays,”a techniqueoriented discussion of Albee’s most dif¤cult, and perhaps obtuse, works (including Box-Mao-Box, Counting the Ways, and The Play about the Baby), examined in terms of Albee’s interest in musical composition as well as art and sculpture. McCarthy’s craft-based essay, partly drawing from Suzanne Langer’s notion of primary and secondary illusions in art, is particularly refreshing in comparison to traditional approaches, which generally hunt for symbols, an approach that Albee himself belittles in Stretching My Mind. Another standout essay is Bottoms’s own “Albee’s Monster Children: Adaptations and Confrontations ,” which looks at Albee’s attempts to adapt Ballad of the Sad Café, Everything...