Seascape: The Entire Appalling Business

By Edward Albee

Book Overview

On the heels of the success of Edward Albee's The Collected Plays of Edward Albee, Overlook brings back--in a stand-alone volume--one of Albee's most cherished plays, a fantastic story of what it means to be alive--winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. On a deserted stretch of beach, a middle-aged couple relaxes after a picnic lunch and converse idly about home, family, and their life together. She sketches; he naps. Then, suddenly, they are joined by two sea creatures, a pair of lizards from the depths of the ocean, with whom they engage in a fascinating dialogue. The emotional and intellectual reverberations of this bizarre conversation will linger in the heart and the mind long after the curtain falls--or the last page is turned.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590200128
• ISBN13: 9781590200124
• Release Date: December 2007
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Length: 124 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.6" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A masterpiece

Simply a masterpiece of American theatre. I don't think this play will ever be revived on Broadway because it really asks the audience to think throught the entire play.

"What's it all about Albee?"

"Seascape" is a literate and eloquent rumination on evolution and the meaning of life. Albee's use of language both impressive and economical. As is his want, the author provokes his audience to challenge prescribed ideology. How rare and refreshing to find an author willing to demand that his audience participate in the theatrical experience by requiring them to question, explore and contemplate.

Alien, point-blank, green and actual.

It has characters and a plot, and you could compare it with Wallace Stevens's "Arrival at the Waldorf" or Valéry's "Graveyard by the Sea," but all there is to its two acts is an evocation of the seaside---coming from town, spending the day, leaving with the tang of iodine in your nostrils.

His best, along with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

This play, about the questions and answers of human evolution, is fascinating. It won the Pulitzer for a reason, and I highly recommend finding out that reason on your own. It's too bad this play has fallen into obscurity-- I think it is one of the best American dramas thus far. Brilliant. Read (or watch, if you get the chance) this play and shiver.