Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

68 Chapter 4 The Playwright
RICHNESS
Depth, subtlety, fineness, quality, wholeness, and
inevitability—these words are often used in reference
to plays we like. They are fundamentally subjective
terms, easier to apply than to define or defend, for the
fact is that when a play pleases us—when it “works”—
the feelings of pleasure and stimulation it affords are
beyond concrete expression. Certainly richness is one
of the qualities common to plays that leave us with this
sense of satisfaction—richness of detail and richness of
dimension.
A play that is rich with detail is not necessarily one that
is rife with detail; it is simply one whose every detail fortifies
our insight into the world of the play. For going to a
play is in part a matter of paying a visit to the playwright’s
world, and the more vividly created that world, the greater
the play’s final impact. In Margaret Edson’s Wit, for example,
Vivian, a terminally ill English professor, addresses
the audience from her hospital bed. Her tone is professorial,
and her vocabulary is filled with medical terminology,
little of which the average audience member will
understand, but in the context of an intellectual woman
struggling against a fatal disease, Edson’s dialogue creates
an immensely compelling and affectingly detailed portrait:
VIVIAN: I don’t mean to complain, but I am becoming very
sick. Very, very sick. Ultimately sick, as it were.
In everything I have done, I have been steadfast,
resolute—some would say in the extreme. Now, as you
can see, I am distinguishing myself in illness.
I have survived eight treatments of Hexamethophosphacil
and Vinplatin at the full dose, ladies and
gentlemen. I have broken the record. I have become
something of a celebrity. Kelekian and Jason
Language is everything for Edward Albee, whose awards include three Pulitzer Prizes and three Tonys (one for Lifetime
Achievement). Albee’s language ranges from the brilliant wit of a Tom Stoppard to the hidden menace of a Harold
Pinter. There are only two characters in his 1959 one-act The Zoo Story, his first produced work, but they became so
vivid in theatergoers’ memories that Albee brought them back in a new play, initially called Peter and Jerry and now
At Home in the Zoo, which acted as a prequel to the original. Shown here in its 2004 world premiere production, this
most recent of his plays, directed at the Hartford Stage by Pam MacKinnon, featured Frank Wood (seated) as Peter and
Frederick Weller as Jerry, as they meet and talk in Central Park—with (eventually) tragic results. © T. Charles Erickson