Edward Albee: A Casebook. Edited by Bruce J. Mann. New York: Routledge, 2003; pp. 150. $85 cloth.

Extract

Scholars and enthusiasts of the work of Edward Albee will be pleased to see this new volume of essays edited by Bruce J. Mann, the first critical collection of essays devoted to the playwright in more than fifteen years. Although it would be hard to judge from the past decade, in which Albee has undergone a renaissance of sorts with several new plays and several major revivals on Broadway (starting in 1994 with Three Tall Women, which earned him his third Pulitzer Prize, and ending most recently with The Goat; or, Who Is Sylvia, which won the Tony for best new play in 2002), Albee had previously lapsed in critical and scholarly favor. This volume aims to capitalize on the recent interest in Albee's work by providing a current survey that pays specific attention to his newer plays, as well as his more obscure ones, and also includes new essays on his three classics: The Zoo Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Delicate Balance. The volume concludes with an interview with the playwright, conducted by Mann in April 1999.