“Three Terrific Actresses”
The 1993-1994 season was a distinguished one in New York
theatre history, if only because it was when two major American plays, both recently
revived, opened there. One was Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, produced on
Broadway, the other was Edward Albee’s Three
Tall Women, seen Off Broadway, and now on Broadway for the first time. Joe
Mantello, who played Louis in the original Angels
in America, interestingly, is now the director of Three Tall Women.  |
| Glenda Jackson, Laurie Metcalf. Photo: Brigitte Lacombe. |
Metcalf and Pill, of course, are among our busiest
actresses, on both stage and screen, so we take their gifted presences for
granted. If you’re a theatre lover (and even if you’re not), however, you
should be rushing to get tickets so you can bask in the radiance of the
81-year-old Jackson, returning to the boards after a quarter of a century
layoff while she busied herself with more mundane duties as the Member of
Parliament for Hampstead and Kilburn.
 |
| Glenda Jackson. Photo: Brigitte Lacombe. |
Jackson made an indelible impression on me (and countless
others) even before she became a star when I saw her 53 years ago in Peter
Brook’s visiting production of Marat/Sade.
The image of her whipping Ian Richardson’s Marat with her long hair as he
reclined in his tub is as vivid as if I’d seen it yesterday. I won’t live
another 53 years, of course, but, however long it is, I suspect that the memory
of her electric performance in Three Tall
Women will always be good for a tingle.
Wearing a silver, marcelled wig, her lips a bright splash of
red across her deeply lined, heavily powdered face, her slender frame with its
fragile bones connected to a spine of steel, she is A, a wealthy, cantankerous,
92-year-old matriarch (she maintains she’s only 91). Dressed in nightshift and
dressing gown, she’s at home in her elegantly appointed bedroom, beautifully
designed by Miriam Buether and lit by Paul Gallo. Her arm in a sling, she sits
in an upholstered armchair while holding court in the company of two other
women. The first half of the play is dominated by her and her memories.
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| Laurie Metcalf. Photo: Brigitte Lacombe. |
The other women are B (Metcalf), 52, A’s hard-working, paid
companion, wearing slacks and blouse, and C (Pill), 26, a pretty, blonde
attorney. C, dressed smartly in a well-tailored business ensemble of black jacket,
skirt, and heels, is there to sort out the old lady’s messy legal paperwork.
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| Alison Pill, Glenda Jackson, Laurie Metcalf. Photo: Brigitte Lacombe. |
When the play is dominated by A and her memories, she’s an
imperious, queenly figure, but she’s also incontinent, demanding, complaining
(everyone’s out to rob her, she often gripes), homophobic, anti-Semitic, and self-contradictory.
At times she appears to be suffering from dementia only for
her to remember experiences—such as those regarding how she dealt with men and
married into money—in great detail or to make bitingly funny remarks. At one
point, she provides a hilariously risqué monologue about her husband’s
“pee-pee” and a diamond bracelet that brings to mind Jerry’s monologue about
the dog in Albee’s The Zoo Story.
 |
| Alison Pill. Photo: Brigitte Lacombe. |
B, while fully aware of A’s difficulty, acts as her
mediator, assuming a wryly cynical, water-off-a-duck’s back acceptance of A’s
inconsistencies and rampant bitchiness, which she humors, while doing
everything she can to make A comfortable. The impatient C, however, is
increasingly frustrated by A’s contrariness, and, to her own disappointment,
unwilling to “be nice.”
We also learn that A has a son, but that there’s a coolness
between him and his mother; the situation, which becomes more stringently
apparent later, when the wordless son himself appears, reflects Albee’s own
bitter relationship with his adoptive mother, who refused to accept his
homosexuality, regardless of his literary fame.
Part one ends with A suffering a stroke. There’s no
intermission between the two parts of this hour and 45-minute play, but when
the second half begins, a dummy of A lies in the bed, while the women appear in
glamorous dresses (for which the great veteran, Ann Roth, is responsible).
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| Laurie Metcalf. Photo: Brigitte Lacombe. |
C now represents A in her 20s, B in her 50s, and A in her
energetic 70s. At the same time, they have about them something of the
characters they played in the first part, but never too obviously. The set,
too, has been altered so that the bed’s headboard has been removed and the rear
wall is mirrored to reflect the audience.
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| Alison Pill, Glenda Jackson, Laurie Metcalf. Photo: Brigitte Lacombe. |
B and C contemplate the invalid in the bed, commenting on
their respective views of ending up like her, or even the optimistic C’s
becoming the world-weary B. Gradually, the audience realizes that B and C are
younger versions of A, who soon enters herself, decked out in a fancy lavender
dress, and no longer the sometimes irrational, uncomfortable character of part
one.
While it’s impossible to accept on a literal level the idea
that these three sharply different characters could actually be the same
person, you can enjoy Albee’s conceit only if you accept his broader vision
about how people evolve over time, sometimes radically, perhaps even having trouble recognizing earlier versions of themselves.
As they converse, waiting for A’s death, B and C recall the
parts of her life they experienced, including their gay son, who walked out
many years ago and, while never forgiven by B, found a kind of reconciliation with
A. This becomes clear when he (uncredited) silently materializes at his
mother’s bedside.
This prompts a discussion of how each version of A, in turn,
changed over the years, and how, because of the lies we’re told, no one is
prepared for the changes that come to all of us. Soon, the women contemplate which
part of life is the happiest, the final hint suggesting that,
perhaps, it comes when life is drawing to its end.
Listening to Albee’s thoughts, sometimes blazingly clear,
sometimes tantalizingly cloudy, and often burst out-laughing funny, expressed
by these masterful actresses produces solidly satisfying theatre.
Jackson’s razor-sharp diction and her commanding voice, more
distinctive than ever, makes her every utterance a gem; she can bring the house
down with a single throwaway word. A four-time Tony nominee, Jackson should be a favorite to finally land the trophy this time around. Metcalf, again as flawless as the Hope
diamond, brings her distinctive human warmth and sense of humor to B, while
rising star Pill makes even the less fully developed C deliciously easy to
swallow.
Three Tall Women is
essentially plotless theatre but the humming motor of its performance and the
perceptive wisdom of its dialogue prevent any hint of creeping stasis. Joe
Mantello and his cast faced a tall order and delivered the goods.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
Golden Theatre
252 W. 45th St., NYC
Open run
