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No title (1961)

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1,222915,841 (3.78)23
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward Albee is one of our most important American playwrights. And nowhere is his dramatic genius more apparent than in two of his probing early works, The American Dream and The Zoo Story.The New Yorker hailed The American Dream as "unique ... brilliant ... a comic nightmare, fantasy of the highest order." The story of one of America's most dysfunctoinal families, it is a ferocious, uproarious attack on the substitution of artificial values for real values-a startling tale of murder and morality that rocks middle-class ethics to its complacent foundations. The Zoo Story is a harrowing depiction of a young man alienated from the human race-a searing story of loneliness and the desperate need for recognition that builds to a violent, shattering climax. Together, these plays show men and women at their most hilarious, heartbreaking, and above all, human-and demonstrate why Edward Albee continues to be one of our greatest living dramatists.… (more)
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The American Dream and The Zoo Story by Edward Albee (1961)

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Both scripts are prefaced by playwright Albee himself. Albee's works are meant to be performed, not read as literature, but a good addition to any modern-era theatre script library. ( )
  DeborahJ2016 | Mar 2, 2021 |
The Zoo story is a riveting tale of a "permanent transient" in conversation with a family man. Dealing with class issues, liberalism v stoicism, and the rise of the American progressivist, Albee throws back funny in the faces of those laughing along. American Dream not as good deals with similar issues in a safe space to be dangerous, something Albee has been doing the fifty+ years he's been writing quality theatre. ( )
2 vote TakeItOrLeaveIt | Mar 4, 2011 |
"The Zoo Story" is fascinating and startling. Albee creates two distinct yet unknown characters, and their story is extremely compelling. ( )
  391 | Dec 22, 2008 |
Horrible. Confusing. Complete waste of time. ( )
  Adrianne_p | Jun 29, 2008 |
The American Dream is so bizarre but then absurdists would say that so is life. We're born, we wait around or play games, and then we die. The language doesn't matter, the point doesn't matter, none of it matters in an absurd world. After having read so many absurdist plays, I just did not particularly like this one-it was a little more tiresome to read than others. The Zoo Story, though, was confusing but I just had to know what Jerry was getting at and what was going to happen-he had me on the edge of my seat. The ending really surprised me-not that it was insane, but the particulars. I thought the plot and the characters made more sense this time around. ( )
1 vote flh4ever | Feb 19, 2008 |
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Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward Albee is one of our most important American playwrights. And nowhere is his dramatic genius more apparent than in two of his probing early works, The American Dream and The Zoo Story.The New Yorker hailed The American Dream as "unique ... brilliant ... a comic nightmare, fantasy of the highest order." The story of one of America's most dysfunctoinal families, it is a ferocious, uproarious attack on the substitution of artificial values for real values-a startling tale of murder and morality that rocks middle-class ethics to its complacent foundations. The Zoo Story is a harrowing depiction of a young man alienated from the human race-a searing story of loneliness and the desperate need for recognition that builds to a violent, shattering climax. Together, these plays show men and women at their most hilarious, heartbreaking, and above all, human-and demonstrate why Edward Albee continues to be one of our greatest living dramatists.

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The American Dream is an early, one-act play by American playwright Edward Albee. It was first staged 24 January 1961 at the York Playhouse in New York City. The play, a satire on American family life, concerns a married couple and their elderly mother. They are visited by two guests this particular day who turn their world upside down.

The family in this play consist of a dominating Mommy, an emasculated Daddy and a clever and witty Grandma. A neighbor, Mrs. Barker, enters and the dialogue continues with the occasional interjection by Grandma. Mommy and Daddy exit leaving Mrs. Barker and Grandma alone. Grandma apparently knows why Mrs. Barker has been asked to come by and explains to her that Mommy and Daddy had adopted a son from her many years previously. As the parents objected to the child's actions, they mutilated it as punishment, eventually killing it. After Mrs. Barker exits, a Young Man appears at the door looking for work. After hearing his life story, Grandma realizes that this Young Man, whom she dubs "The American Dream," is the twin of Mommy and Daddy's first child. As the first child was mutilated, he too was experiencing the pain and has been left as an empty shell of a man. After seeing this Young Man as a way out, she moves her things and leaves. The Young Man is introduced to the family as a suitable replacement for the original child.

Albee explores not only the falsity of the American Dream but also the American family's status quo. As he states in the preface to the play, "[It is] an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, emasculation, and vacuity; it is a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen."

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