Three Tall Women (Hardcover)

by Edward Albee (Author) "At rise, A is in the stage left armchair, B in the stage right one, C on the bed foot bench..." (more)
Key Phrases: tall women

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Albee's drama of an old woman coming to grips with her life and approaching death earned him his third Pulitzer.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Booklist
Albee's best plays have always walked a line between heightened realism and dark comedy. Even his most surreal works are populated with characters who wouldn't seem out of place in real life. His 1994 Pulitzer Prize winner runs true to form. It begins as a naturalistic conversation among three women (identified as A, B, and C) from successive generations who meet in a hospital room. Each is undergoing a change from one life phase to another, and each faces her travails and disappointments with lots of Albee's trademark bitter wit. In the second act, however, the three women become representatives of the same person at different ages (26, 52, late 80s), and their bickering talk becomes a touching internal colloquy about life, love, and the inevitability of loss. Not since Beckett's brooding meditation Krapp's Last Tape has a playwright dealt so movingly with the subject of disappointment, aging, and death. Jack Helbig

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: E. P. Dutton; 1st edition (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525939601
• ISBN-13: 978-0525939603
• Product Dimensions: 20 x 20 x 20 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,813,243 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Albee's best work since "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"., November 7, 1998

By	D. Landrum (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Three Tall Women (Drama, Plume) (Paperback)

This play has imaginatively captured a lifetime of struggles one woman experiences, depicted as three women as the same woman in different ages in her life. Albee uses believable situations that are all easily relatable, emphasizing how we deal with our problems and how we deal with ourselves. I would recommend this play for theatergoers, novel readers and especially students of the theater. "Three Tall Women" should sit on the shelf next to "The Glass Menagerie" and "Les Liaisons Dangereuses". Happy reading!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Triumph--Albee's Best, January 1, 2005

By	Pintorini (Saint Louis, Missouri United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Three Tall Women (Drama, Plume) (Paperback)

It's unusual for a playwright to produce his or her best work in late-career, but that's what Albee has done in *Three Tall Women.* The essence of Albee's genius has long been his ability to get language to do what he wants, rather than being constrained by what language wants to do. But in *Three Tall Women*, unlike in *Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf*, there's something urgent and concrete at stake: what, exactly, was the meaning of a dying woman's ninety-two year life? It's this question that fuels the gripping conflict between the play's three characters, "A", "B", and "C", who represent a single woman at ages 26, 52, and 92.

There is so much in *Three Tall Woman* for brilliant actresses to exploit that the play seems virtually certain to be a hot ticket for as long as live theater exists. It's the kind of play that, if properly cast, could sell out the National Theater of Mars, or a similarly remote venue.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There is no denying., October 13, 2004

By	Aco - See all my reviews

This review is from: Three Tall Women (Drama, Plume) (Paperback)

A very remarkable life experience shared through the self. I love Albee. Such a fluid writer. Willing to expose s--t and anguish and self-loathing and nostaglia and laugh about it. This play is very direct, interesting, full of mortal longing presented though an amazingly simple concept. The three tall women, A, B and C are one woman. But at three different times in their own life. What comes is a moving sweep of life, as thought through in the future by C, the past and future by B and the past by A. What would you ask yourself if you met you twenty-five or sixty years from now? What would you say to yourself knowing what you know now to you thirty years ago? Etc., etc. There is no denying, the concept and idea of such a dialogue is ancient, and here Albee contemparizes it in the bittersweet way that life is. Read this if you love Albee, if your into philosophy, time travel, theoretical physics, feminism....There is no denying.