About
the Play:
Three Tall Women has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Female/Female Scenes, and Three-Female Scenes.
Three Tall Women is a full-length drama by Edward Albee.
As an imperious, acerbic old woman lies dying, she is tended by two
other women and visited by a young man. Widely acknowledged as the
outstanding piece amongst Edward Albee's later work, Three
Tall Women is a kaleidoscopic view of one woman's life, which, in
1994, won the Pulitzer Prize for Best Play, as well as a handful of
other prestigious awards.
Three Tall Women is a masterwork of modern theatre. In Act
One, we are introduced to a trio of women named "A", "B",
and "C", respectively aged 91, 52 and 26. A young lawyer,
known only as "C," has been sent to the home of a client, a
ninety-one-year-old woman, "A," to sort out her finances.
"A," frail, perhaps a bit senile, resists and is of no help
to "C." Along with "B," the old woman's
middle-aged personal support worker, "C" tries to convince
"A" that she must concentrate on the matters at hand. In
"A's" beautifully appointed bedroom, she prods, discusses
and bickers with "B" and "C," her captives. "A's"
long life is laid out for display, no holds barred. She cascades from
regal and charming to vicious and wretched as she wonders about and
remembers her life: her husband and their cold, passionless marriage;
her son and their estrangement. How did she become this? Who is she?
Finally, when recounting her most painful memory, she suffers a
stroke. In Act Two, "A's" comatose body lies in bed as "B"
and "C" observe no changes in her condition. In a startling
coup-de-theatre, "A" enters, very much alive and quite
lucid. The three women are now the stages of "A's" life:
the imperious old woman, the regal matron and the young woman of
twenty-six. Her life, memories and reminiscences – pondered in the
first act – are now unceremoniously examined, questioned, accepted
or not, but, at last, understood. In the end, her son arrives and
kneels at her bedside, but it is too late.
Three Tall Women premiered in 1991 in Austria, under the
author's direction, at Vienna's English Theatre. It premiered
Off-Broadway in 1994 at Vineyard Theatre and transferred to Broadway
at the Promenade Theatre. It won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Drama,
and received the New York Drama Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel and
Outer Critics Circle awards for Best Play. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and
has been performed in regional, high school, college, and
community theatre productions.
Cast: 3 female, 1 male
What people say:
"One of America's finest
playwrights. Edward Albee offers a new play so
good it can only exist on the stage. A perfect illustration of why
theater is an indispensable art." — The New York
Times
"An extraordinarily brilliant
new play. Three Tall Women is the best, most
forceful play [Albee] has given us…To be truthful about death is
admirable, but to be elegant at the same time is almost Mozartian."
— New York Post
"Beautiful and enduring. Three
Tall Women has earned Albee his third, and most deserved,
Pulitzer Prize." — The New Yorker
"A dazzler…Worthy of mention
in the same breath as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Delicate
Balance. Three Tall Women blazes as bright as a
midsummer day. Electrifying and heartrending, each of Albee's women
is memorable…." — Wall Street Journal
"Stunning … a masterpiece."
— Time Magizine
"A powerful and moving work,
his most emotionally affecting play since Who's Afraid of Virgina
Woolf? … A memorable trinity of women … a passionate encounter
with mortality." — Newsweek
"Fine and authentic … Three
Tall Women restores, or confirms, Edward Albee as one of
America's leading playwrights." — New York Observer
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.