SOURCE: "Edward Albee," in American Playwrights: 1945-75, Pitman Publishing, 1976, pp. 52-63.

In the essay that follows, Hughes presents a largely negative appraisal of Albee's works.

Almost from the moment of his first New York production, The Zoo Story (1960), Edward Albee has been regarded as the most 'promising' American playwright since the Williams-Miller generation. With Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), the hopes and hosannas increased. Since, there has been mainly disappointment, a series of plays that fell short of effectiveness interspersed with adaptations of other writers' works. Was Albee, then, yet another flash-inthe-pan, a one-play playwright destined to the same fate as Inge, Anderson and all too many others? It would be easy to concur. Yet Albee (born in 1928) is still in his forties. His two most recent plays, All Over (1971) and Seascape (1975), while not successful on the level of Virginia Woolf, are among his most ambitious.

The Zoo...