Honors For 'Comeback Albee'
Edward Albee, playwright and Montauk resident, will be honored this weekend by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., at the center's annual awards ceremony.
Two years ago, Mr. Albee won his third Pulitzer Prize, for "Three Tall Women," satisfying not only those who love good theater, but also everyone who loves a good comeback story - the playwright having been feted by the critics in the 1960s and early '70s, then dismissed and ignored in the 1980s.
He won a Pulitzer for "A Delicate Balance" in 1967 and for "Seascape" in 1975. No playwright, apart from Eugene O'Neill, has won more Pulitzers. But then, while Mr. Albee himself maintained a steady course, critical winds shifted.
No Time For Critics
Toward "The Man Who Had Three Arms" in 1983, Frank Rich cast some memorable barbs: "The craftsmanship is rudimentary . . . virulent and gratuitous misogyny . . . narcissistic arrogance and bile."
Small wonder that Mr. Albee, who did not attempt a New York City staging for 10 years thereafter, has been quoted as saying of critics that "the world would be a better place without them."
What is perhaps even more surprising than the playwright's ability to rebound from outer darkness to the lights of the big-time marquee is to look back and see that Mr. Albee's most famous play, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," did not win a Pulitzer.
The Barn At Montauk
The Pulitzer jury voted "Virginia Woolf" the prize, but the Pulitzer board, which has the last word, got cold feet because of the play's language and bitter candor and overturned the decision, preferring to give no drama award at all that year (1961).
The play, a terrifying revelation of a battling, angry marriage, is considered a classic of the American theater and is seldom out of production.
After its enormous success, Mr. Albee renovated an old barn in Montauk and started a foundation for younger artists, and for older ones who had been forgotten, in both visual and written arts. Every year six artists spend a working summer in Montauk at the Barn.
The foundation also ran the Playwrights Unit in Manhattan in the 1960s and early '70s and produced over 110 plays by new playwrights, including Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Terrence McNally, Adrienne Kennedy, and John Guare.
It is surely for these - and other projects that Mr. Albee has under taken to keep live theater going and to help new talent - as much as for his solid return to the spotlight that the Kennedy Center will honor the playwright on Sunday.
The honors recipients are recognized for their lifetime contribution to American culture through the performing arts. In addition to Mr. Albee, the honorees this year are Benny Carter, Johnny Cash, Jack Lemmon, and Maria Tallchief.
They will be saluted at a gala performance in the Kennedy Center's Opera House, to be attended by President and Mrs. Clinton. It will be recorded for broadcast as a two-hour special on CBS television, to be shown on Dec. 26.