Signature Theatre's production of Edward Albee's The Lady from Dubuque demonstrates the company's mandate - representing
the range of a playwright's work.
This 1978 play was written in the years between two great plays - Seascape (1974) and Three Tall Women (1991), both Pulitzer Prize winners. Not that
Albee was exactly idle during these years; there were five other plays, but
none of them reached the heights of Seascape
or Women, or earlier work like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962).
Dubuque seems to start off in
Virginia Woolf territory, only it's
three couples instead of two having a late-night drink-up and cage match.
Long-legged, elegant Jo (Laila Robins) is mistress of the caustic quip and
launches zingers from an Eames chair as she sizes up the weaknesses of the
others. Husband Sam (Michael Hayden) seems to be playing a role as genial host
and master of the suburban house.
Pugnacious Fred (C.J. Wilson) is a bully with a much-younger girlfriend
Carol (Tricia Paoluccio) who is apparently a hapless airhead. Conventional
Edgar (Thomas Jay Ryan) accompanies hand-wringing, neurotic doormat Lucinda
(Catherine Curtin).
Again, like Woolf, there is
games-playing going on. As the curtain rises, Sam is starting "Twenty
Questions" with the fraught query, "Who am I?" But the apparently sociable evening immediately heads off the rails as Jo addresses the audience
with the frank admission that she is dying. Since the atmosphere is one of
games-playing, one has some doubt at first as to whether she actually is dying.
As the evening progresses, a second game takes place when Carol, who's
not as clueless as she first seems, and Sam pretend he assaulted her in another
room - but it's just a put-on to get a reaction out of the others. Pretty soon,
Jo leaves no doubt that she is dying, doubled up and screaming in pain.
In the second act, the morning after, Sam descends the winding stair of
John Arnone's gorgeous set to find yet another couple in his living room - the
elegant, white-haired Elizabeth (Jane Alexander) and Oscar (Peter Francis
James). Sam opens the act with the question, "Who are you?"
They are Death, of course, come to take Jo and you can see it coming a
mile away. With not much surprise left in the text and much screaming from the
dying Jo and several of the other characters, the play visits the house of
tedium. Albee's nihilistic view sees no particular peace in death, certainly no
religious victory, and not much wisdom. So what is left? "Nothing is
retained. Nothing," Oscar says. "There is only one thing that
matters: Who am I?" Sam says.
All right, if finding truth in identity is what matters, then what has
Jo found? Not much but witty, savage assaults on the existential inevitable. While Virginia Woolf inhabits equally bleak territory, wondering how the characters in that play are going to live proves to be more interesting than considering how one in Dubuque is going to die. Nevertheless, seeing this play provides a deeper understanding of this great writer's body of work.