About the Play:

The Play About the Baby has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues.

The Play About the Baby is a full-length drama by Edward Albee. A young couple has just had a baby. They are madly in love, and have the perfect life. Their bliss is suddenly interrupted when they are visited by an older man and woman. A truly strange turn of events transpires, setting off an evening of manipulations and mind games that ultimately question reality.

The Play About the Baby is a compelling, mysterious and comic play which explores the relationship between four people crossing generation and gender. If you have no wounds, how can you know if you're alive? By turns funny, mysterious and disturbing, The Play About the Baby concerns a young couple who are madly in love with each other, have a child – the perfect family – that is, until an older couple steal the baby. Through a series of mind games and manipulations, they call into question both couples' sense of reality and fiction, joy and sorrow in this devastating black comedy. Edward Albee's trademark wit and incandescent language shed light on the joys and terrors of creating another human being in what many have called his absurdist take on his own Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

The Play About the Baby premiered in 1998 at the Almeida Theatre Company off West End in the London Borough of Islington. Its American premiere was in 2000 at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas. The play opened Off-Broadway in 2001 at the Century Center for the Performing Arts. It was nominated for the 2001 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Play and was a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. 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: 2 female, 2 male

What people say:

"An invaluable self-portrait of sorts from one of the few genuinely great living American dramatists …Baby rockets into that special corner of theater heaven where words shoot off like fireworks into dazzling patterns and hues." — The New York Times

"An exhilarating, wicked, devastating piece of emotional terrorism." — New York Newsday

"A frequently funny and ultimately devastating battle of wills, which is unquestionably the main event of the Off-Broadway season…Albee's play is revealed here to be among his very finest." — Variety

"At times, Baby is giddily funny, reminiscent of burlesque in its high spirits and banter. Albee has fashioned an absurdist black comedy before ending with a disquieting chill." — Associated Press

"An enriching, provocative work." — New York Daily News

"You're unlikely to find a more intriguingly structured, provocative or entertaining new play." — Curtain Up

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.