[(review date Autumn 1995) In the following review, Hutchings examines Three Tall Women , comparing it to works by Samuel Beckett .]
Identified only as B and C, two of the three tall women of Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama are engaged in a deathwatch for the third, the ninety-two-year-old, bedridden, bitingly sarcastic A. B, according to Albee's production notes, "looks rather as A would have at 52," while C "looks rather as B would have at 26." In the first act the three are distinctly separate characters, generationally different but sometimes overcoming their mutual incomprehensions. The second act, however, perpetrates an intriguing, Pirandello-like change: the three generations represented on stage are no longer three separate people in the room at one time but one person at three separate ages in her life. As in the first act, though from an...