Edward Albee was raised by a woman who knew a lot about horses and nothing about mothering. His fictional treatment of his early life is the play's undergirding. Questions raised about how we use or revise our memories to fit our identities will resonate with you long after you leave the theater.
Three Tall Women
A Play by Edward Albee
Directed by Spiro Veloudos, Set by Christina Todesco, Costumes by Molly Trainor, Lights by Karen Perlow, Music by Peter Bayne
Lyric Stage Company through April 26
Tickets, $25-50,617-585-5678
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes including one 15 minute intermission
Here are three good reasons to see Three Tall Women: Anne Scurria, Paula Plum, Liz Hayes.
Another reason to see the play is that Edward Albee wrote it. Forget what you’ve heard about the playwright being inaccessible. He poured his heart out (Albee-style) in writing this 1994 Pulitzer Prize winning play in which he fictionalized his upbringing.
The result is a touching, witty charmer that seesaws between broad humor and dark reality. The combination is odd but Albee is a master of making great stuff from unlikely premises.
Albee was raised by a woman who knew a lot about horses and nothing about mothering. By the time he packed his bag, never to return, he left behind a trail of schools he’d been kicked out of and a painful broken relationship with his mother.
To reveal the play’s structure would take the wallop out of seeing it for the first time. One thing that must be revealed is that you don’t have a chance to see three high-velocity actresses play off one another that often. The women, whom Albee named A, B, and C are played by three powerhouses: Anne Scurria of the Trinity Repertory Theater, Paula Plum, a fixture in Boston drama circles, and up-and-comer Liz Hayes.
Scurria and Plum are fully vested in their roles from the opening scene. The 92 year-old A (Scurria) shoots from the hip, not one PC bone in her aged body. Eighty one year-old Albee writes with the same rifle-bore directness.
As the shadow of death nears, do we re-imagine life’s losses and pleasures as they occurred or as we wished they had occurred? On occasion, A’s attempts to remember accurately are like watching the proverbial camel fit through the eye of a needle. One wonders how much Albee struggled with the same question as he wrote this loosely autobiographical play.
Paula Plum’s Fifty something B, a cool breeze of mortality just beginning to chill her shoulders, uses her droll wit and deadpan black humor to ready herself for the trials of A, who might represent her own future. Liz Hays as twenty-six year old C is infused with the limitless possibilities of a life unfolding. Hayes, to her credit, inhabits her role more and more deeply as the play develops.
Albee’s preoccupation with the roiling themes of age, memory, relationships, and meaning are packed inside this freight train of a play. From the ABC of it to the XYZ of it, this is the best production you’re likely to see in Boston this season.
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