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Let's not mince words: there's something awesome about "Three Tall Women", Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning meditation on the meaning of a woman's life and death. In an era of hype, there's a kind of miraculous surprise in finding yourself in the presence of a genuine masterpiece, a theatrical experience that is unsettling, moving, yet caustically funny. Daring and deeply personal, Albee's bleak character study -- apparently based on his adoptive mother -- shines with a harsh, elegaic beauty.
In the Beck Center's Studio Theatre, Evie McElroy's production is breathtakingly intimate and ruthlessly unsentimental. Several superb performances and a jewel-like design make this production a must-see.
In a burnished bedroom of Oriental rugs, Chinese screens, and a mahogany four-poster bed, we meet "A", a gimlet-eyed 92-year-old woman whose health and memory is failing. Tended by a compassionate middle-aged caregiver ("B") and observed by a disapproving young woman attorney ("C") who is futilely trying to straighten out A's financial affairs, the old woman rambles and reminisces, rails and complains. Her memories, which begin in self-aggrandizement, begin to contradict themselves, eventually revealing a life peppered with unhappiness and bitter disappointments.
Act One alone is a tour-de-force for a mature actress, and Rhoda Rosen is magnificent as "A": eyes glittering with malice, turning on a dime from rosy recollection to rage to childlike hurt, she is as fierce and majestic and needy as any Lear.
Then Albee magically raises the stakes. From the almost naturalistic first act, which ends with A's stroke, the second act becomes a witty and razor-sharp Platonic dialogue. The three women are revealed to be the same "tall woman" at different stages of life: at 92, 52, and 26. As the body lies comatose in the bed, they hover and confront each other's illusions about what actually happened in their life, and how to evaluate it.
Bernice Bolek is also brilliant as "B" -- centered, haughty, with an elegant presence and mature sexuality, she makes you see the tragedy at the center of her life with a spotlight intensity. As the young woman, Emily Schnurr is lovely but cold; there is a callowness to her that paradoxically makes her somehow less sympathetic than the older women, whose brittleness is somehow balanced by the pain in their lives.
Ed Walsh makes a cameo appearance as the playwright's alter ego: a silent, grieving son whose presence is goad to the bitter memories we see unfolding.
Bleak and uncompromising, "Three Tall Women" is strong medicine. But there is a bracing honesty to the portrayals that also sparks a metaphysical laughter, and a paradoxical lift to the soul. It's as though by examining a life with such a pitiless lens, Albee finds compassion and deliverance. It's a remarkable play, in a memorable production. See it.
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