If it should prove to be the case that I like Edward Albee's new play, "The Lady from Dubuque,"… less well than other people do, one reason may be that the play is of a sort that I find particularly unsympathetic. Mr. Albee's intentions and my prejudices confront each other with an immediacy that has, if nothing else, the virtue of appropriateness, for in Albee's oeuvre a confrontation, usually within the bonds of a formally affectionate relationship, soon leads to collision, out of which a pinch of painful truth is expected to emerge. In the present instance, the truth I think I see emerging can be stated as a dictum: Plays that begin in a naturalistic vein risk losing credibility and the interest of their audiences if at the halfway mark they suddenly introduce characters who turn out to be personifications of states of mind or conditions of...