SOURCE: "Albee and the Medusa Head," in New Republic, Vol. 147, No. 18, November 3, 1962, pp. 29-30.

In the following excerpt of a review of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Brustein recognizes Albee's talent for compelling and clever dialogue and his inventiveness, but also notes what he perceives as the author's failure to create a cohesive drama.

Edward Albee's new work embodies both the failings and the virtues of his previous plays. But its positive achievements are substantial, and I am finally beginning to regard this playwright's future with real expectation. Albee's technical dexterity has always been breathtaking—for sheer theatrical skill, no American, not even Williams, can match him—but like Williams, he has been inclined to falsify his native gifts, distorting experience through self-defensive reflecting mirrors. In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Albee is still not looking the Gorgon smack in the eye. Still, he has conjured up its...