The resultant commercial catastrophe and quick closing of the play apart, how does this affect your own feeling about the piece itself? It had as close to one hundred percent bad notices as a play could get. One of your most recent plays was an adaptation of James Purdy’s novel Malcolm. But Albee’s barbed, poised, and elegantly guarded public press style took over after the phrasing of the first question-though perhaps it was intermittently penetrated during the course of the talk. The interviewer and subject have been both friends and composer-writer collaborators for about eighteen years.
He appeared, as the climate of the afternoon demanded, somewhat uncomfortable. He was as yet unshaven for the day and his neo-Edwardian haircut was damply askew. Still, it is in his country house that he generally seems most at ease, natural, at home.Īlbee was dressed with a mildly ungroomed informality.
With the exception of a handsome, newly built tennis court (in which the playwright takes a disarmingly childlike pleasure and pride) and an incongruously grand Henry Moore sculpture situated high on a landscaped terrace that commands a startling view of the sea, the simplicity of the place leaves one with the curious impression that the news of the personal wealth his work has brought him has not quite reached the playwright-in-residence at Montauk. Keeping in mind his luxuriously appointed house in New York City’s Greenwich Village, one finds the country place dramatically modest by comparison. The interview happened on a scalding, soggy-aired Fourth of July in a sunny room in Albee’s small, attractive country house in Montauk, Long Island. Interviewed by William Flanagan Issue 39, Fall 1966
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