Modern Life

Modern Life

Modern Life

I think in albee''s monumental play there is something charming about this piece. Unlike a lot of Albee pieces, this one doesn't set out on a trail of secret ambushes - unless you count an interview with a dead person an ambush. It also travels the very difficult path of making entertainment out of history. This is difficult because history is a form of reality, and reality does not often provide us with a dramatic arc. Neither does this play, unless you count Nevelson herself.

In this play, you get to go along for the ride because the fabulous work by Larry Bryggman (the Man) and Mercedes Ruehl (Louise Nevelson) takes you there. I was particularly drawn to Bryggman, who I have seen in many plays and whose work has always left me cold. He appears as though he was waiting for the curtain call so he could leave the theatre and go be charming somewhere.

"All Over" is what Edward Albee calls his new play, now struggling valiantly for life at the Martin Beck Theater. And "all over" is what wisecracking woe-wishers are saying about the career of the 43-year-old playwright who, just nine years ago, shattered conventions, nerves and possibly a few marriages with his scalding portrait of a carnivorous couple named Martha and George in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Albee still has his fervent fans--Clive Barnes and Harold Clurman among them--but his efforts in recent years have left a great many viewers feeling befuddled, bothered and belligerent. Where have Albee's powers gone, they want to know--where's the white-hot passion of "Virginia Woolf," and where's the riveting tension of his early one-acters, "The Zoo Story" and "The American Dream"? By comparison, "Tiny Alice" and “Box-Mao-Box" seemed inscrutable puzzles, or painful put-ons.

But the critical dams burst a ...