Tiny Alice

I know this play has always confounded audiences and elicited maximum venom from critics. Extracts: from Eliott Norton (laudatory), "big and brutal as an Elizabethan tragedy, sinister and blasphemous as a black mass, more depraved than any drama yet produced on the American stage", to Philip Roth, who called it ''a homosexual daydream.'' Albee's own mature judgment was, "Come on, you childish, foolish young playwright fond of the sound of your own voice." Yet this enigma has always haunted me -- surely at least part of the original intention.

An odd and confusing play by an acclaimed American master playwright, whom I have generally liked much better. This is about an odd and enigmatic heiress who sends her lover/lawyer to the Cardinal of the local diocese with an offer of an immense donation, which turns out to be the value of an innocent man's soul and his sacrifice by the Church for filthy lucre. This does not exactly describe the events within, but it's close enough. I can't figure out quite what archtypes the various characters are supposed to represent, but the basic war of good and evil is apparently the theme, with innocent bystanders to boot. This started out with more promise, but eventually sinks into confusion and pomposity. Albee would have been better served show more with less obfuscation and more clarity. show less