Angie Radosh, Geneva Rae and Beth Dixonin Three Tall Women.
By Hap Erstein
He has never actually been to Palm Beach Dramaworks’ West Palm Beach theater, but with five of his plays produced there, Edward Albee is the company’s unofficial resident playwright.
It might have been more in keeping with the troupe’s mission of presenting worthy, but neglected scripts had Dramaworks reached back for a less-seen Albee play like Tiny Alice or All Over, but in its continuing consideration of his work, the 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning Three Tall Women – the third Pulitzer for the generally acknowledged greatest living American playwright – will certainly suffice.
In a crisply performed production that J. Barry Lewis stages with admirable clarity and simplicity, we eavesdrop as Albee paints an acid-dipped portrait of his adoptive mother. Elements of her have appeared in other plays of his, but never so directly as in this character sketch of a 92-year-old woman of privilege, consumed by bitterness, succumbing to the ravages of a stroke and ultimately accepting the release of death.
Both acts of Three Tall Women contain Albee’s exacting word choices and hyper-articulate dialogue, but are otherwise quite different. The first act is a largely naturalistic exchange among the aged matriarch (Beth Dixon), her wily, but subservient middle-aged caregiver (Angie Radosh), and a young emissary of the old woman’s lawyer (Geneva Rae). At the old woman’s affluent, austere home to help sort out some financial matters, the young underling cannot resist some verbal sniping over the client’s racial epithets and general dismissive attitude.
The act ends with the old woman’s stroke and, after intermission, she is seen lying motionless in bed while the three actresses inhabit the room, representing aspects of her at three distinct ages of her life – 26, 52 and 92. That may take a few minutes to adjust to, but it seems to come into focus more easily than it did in the national tour of the play’s original off-Broadway production. Or maybe that is just a consequence of time and familiarity with the material.
Certainly the Dramaworks cast deserves some of the credit for the play’s current impact. Dixon plays the old woman with her hard edges intact, dominating the production in the same way that her character does. If we keep in mind that this is Albee’s recollection of his mother, he has not mellowed in his opinion of her.
As her nurse, Radosh handles the character’s duties capably, trying to placate the perpetually cranky woman and acting protectively of her against the sniping of the young visitor. Rae is a bit starchy in the early going, but comes across better in the second act as the young woman appalled that she will become the two soured souls she sees in front of her. Also in the cast is Chris Marks as a preppy young, mute stand-in for Albee, an important presence but a fairly thankless acting assignment.
Three Tall Women represents one of Albee’s several career comebacks, a late work that shows him at his full powers. Ultimately, it is full of the wisdom of age, with an emotional range from bitterness to acceptance. Unlike Seascape, it deserves its Pulitzer and its place on Albee’s top shelf, as evidenced by Dramaworks’ first-rate production.
THREE TALL WOMEN, Palm Beach Dramaworks, 322 Banyan Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through June 13. Tickets: $42-$44. Call: (561) 514-4042.