Signs that the mainstream is going furry - "Seascape" (& other Bway shows)
joestr...@hotmail.com
won a fuggin' PULITZER PRIZE for Edward Albee, one of the most
respected playwrights of the American theater (or 'thee-ay-teer' as us
NYC swells like to say) when it was first produced in 1975. A new
version will be premiering soon. Here's some notes about the show I
found online:
****
With Seascape, American playwright Edward Albee won his second Pulitzer
Prize for drama. Albee himself directed this Broadway production, which
opened on January 26, 1975, at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre. The play was
published by Atheneum that same year. Like many of Albee's plays,
Seascape focuses on communication in interpersonal relationships, in
this case between couples. Albee's first successful play, Who's Afraid
of Virginia Woolf? (1962), and his first Pulitzer Prize-winning play, A
Delicate Balance (1966), also concerned this topic. Seascape is
different from these dramas on several counts. The play is not strictly
a drama but, according to various critics, has elements of comedy,
fantasy, satire, and/or absurdism. In Seascape, Nancy and Charlie, an
American couple on the verge of the major life change of retirement,
are having problems in their relationship. They are discussing these
matters on the beach when another couple appears, two human-sized
lizards named Leslie and Sarah who speak and act like people. The
lizards have evolved to such a degree that they no longer feel at home
in the sea and are compelled to seek life on the land What the lizards
experience with Nancy and Charlie nearly drives them back to the sea,
but with an offer of help from the human couple, they decide to stay.
This relatively happy ending is not common in many of Albee's previous
plays, and some critics find it refreshing. Critics are divided in
their opinion of the play and its content. Some believe it is witty and
original, while others find it to be pompous if not gimmicky, primarily
because of the lizard characters. One critic who found Seascape
noteworthy, Clive Barnes of the New York Times, writes, "it is a
curiously compelling exploration into the basic tenet of life. It is
asking in a lighthearted but heavy-minded fashion whether life is worth
living. It decides that there is no alternative."
****
Y'know, it seems like Broadway does shows left & right where actors
play animals: Lion King, Cats, Into the Woods had a very sexy big bad
wolf ('there's no describing how you feel/when you're talking to your
meal'). Quite a few others too - right now I'm trying to track down a
copy of 'The Man in the Dog Suit,' a play that ran briefly in the
1950's about a meek guy who decides to rebel against society. Geez, if
he was around nowadays, he could just go to a furry con...