American playwrights and screenwriters seem to have run out of timely issues and borrowed subjects and, since the late seventies, to have hit upon one which the great world dramatists have treated for centuries with greater insight and less arrogance and glibness: death. With The Lady from Dubuque Edward Albee takes his place among a cadre of recent Americans who have focused on this ultimate of passage rites.

Sam and his wife Jo, a victim of some terminal form of cancer, give parties for and play parlor games with a seemingly masochistic group of friends. The play opens during one such gathering. (p. 473)

The second act focuses on the appearance of the mysterious Elizabeth, an angel of death—cum-mama who, with her black friend Oscar, takes over the house with several brilliantly executed acts of psychological terrorism…. After repeated postulations of the question "Who are you?" throughout the...