Marriage Play

by Edward Albee

Jack comes home from a middling day at the office to quickly announce to his wife, Gillian, that he is leaving her. Suspecting for some time a midlife crisis, Gillian goads Jack about this announcement, forcing him to try it again-going outside and coming in again-twice! Jack wants his wife, whom he still loves, to really understand his fears and the reasons he must leave her. His days seem unknown to him; his secretary of fifteen years is a total stranger; his sex is by rote. Gillian understands but feels the investment of a thirty-year marriage is worth holding on to because so much is in place, and quite frankly, they've been through these changes before: affairs, neglect, sections of time forgotten. Jack accuses Gillian of not listening, an accusation she easily returns, and when Jack then does start to leave, Gillian blocks him and a small battle ensues. Retreating to their corners, both recount memorable points in their marriage and lives, and discovering that through it all, nothing is really enough. As the lights fade, they prepare for a departure but don't make a move.

Genres: Plays, Drama

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Noted American playwright Edward Franklin Albee explored the darker aspects of human relationships in plays like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) and Three Tall Women (1991), which won his third Pulitzer Prize.

People know Edward Franklin Albee III for works, including The Zoo Story , The Sandbox and The American Dream .
He well crafted his works, considered often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflected a mastery and Americanization of the theater of the absurd, which found its peak in European playwrights, such as Jean Genet, Samuel Barclay Beckett, and Eugène Ionesco. Younger Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel credits daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue of Albee with helping to reinvent the postwar theater in the early 1960s. Dedication of Albee to continuing to evolve his voice — as evidenced in later productions such as The Goat or Who Is Sylvia? (2000) — also routinely marks him as distinct of his era.

Albee described his work as "an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen."

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was ready halfway through this to dismiss it as "Married People Say Nasty Clever Things Vol. 7", but I have to admit the end is pretty tough (in the positive sense of that word.) An oft unfaithful man announces to his wife that he's leaving, and then fails to do so for 37 pages in this "Waiting for Godot" polish on the relationship dissolution genre.

[Romany Arrowsmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Play no. 2 performed aloud: Not Albee's best, but charming.