About the Play:

Everything in the Garden has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Female scene-study showcases.

Everything in the Garden is a full-length drama adapted by Edward Albee from an earlier British play by Giles Cooper. This show tells the story of a suburban couple trying to fit in. However, the only thing standing in the way of Richard and Jenny's happiness is a lack of money. The action starts in an entertaining comedy of manners style. When Jenny begins earning money through a new job, Richard isn't sure he likes his wife's new profession! Everything in the Garden is a biting, dark comedy about greed that will leave your audience with much to consider.

Everything in the Garden centers on Jenny and Richard, a couple who have moved out to the suburbs in search of the good life, the very expensive house, the country tennis club and of course private school education for their son. The couple are struggling to maintain their relationship, while wrestling with constant money problems that prevent them from getting involved in the wasteful spending that will mean they can keep up with their neighbours. Though Jenny is perfectly willing to work, Richard's old fashioned values prevent him from even considering her offer. A solution arrives in the person of an upper-class British madam, called Mrs. Toothe, who runs a high class brothel staffed by upper-middle-class wives. She provides Jenny with a means to earn the cash she so desperately desires. Jenny wants to buy a greenhouse, and purchase all the many other luxuries of suburban living, within a society that pretends virtue but actually practices, behind closed doors, every vice to make themselves richer…. More than that, they are prepared not merely to justify but defend the ends through which their means are attained – and the devastated Richard, left in agonized despair by the ironic events that charge the final moments of the play, must face the fact of his own share in their communal guilt. Filled with shades of meaning, subtleties, and whole paragraphs of brilliant dialogue, A Delicate Balance may be Edward Albee's masterpiece, a timeless mirror of the worst, and sometimes the best, aspects of modern life.

Everything in the Garden premiered in 1962 in a Royal Shakespeare Company production at the New Arts Theatre Club in London. It was originally written by Giles Cooper, who was killed before he had the chance to retool it for an American audience. Edward Albee was chosen to complete this transition his adaptation premiered in 1967 at the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway in New York City. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 5 female, 5 male, 1 boy

What people say:

"…the first important American play of the season." — New York Post

"…altogether absorbing and original." — New York Newsday

"Mr. Albee is not merely our most hopeful playwright, our most promising playwright, our most interesting playwright — he is, quite simply, our best playwright." — The New York Times

About the Playwright:

Edward Albee (1928-2016) was an American playwright. Widely considered the foremost American dramatist of his generation, he wrote and directed some of the best plays in contemporary American theatre. Three of his plays have received Pulitzer Prizes, and two won a Tony Award for best play. He was awarded the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1980, and in 1996 he received both the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts. In 2005 he was awarded the special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.