Me, Myself & I

When the announcement was made that Edward Albee had been commissioned to write a play that would make its world premiere at Princeton's McCarter Theater, I was very excited. Albee is the preeminent living American playwright, and if I had to choose, I would select Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf as my all-time favorite play (I used to check it out from the local library many times when I was a teenager). Therefore I am disappointed to report that the resulting play, Me, Myself & I, is a rather weak evening of theater.

When I went to see Albee speak about the play at the Princeton library about two weeks ago, he mentioned that the play was comical, and that ironically he had written it during one of the most difficult periods of his life--the death of his companion of thirty-five years. But after seeing the play, which is a frothy bit of nonsense, it's easy to see how a man throws himself into something silly to avoid the harsh realities of life.

Albee, a great admirer of Beckett and Pirandello, has fashioned a play somewhat like those two greats--albeit a Beckett play as translated by Dr. Seuss. It concerns identical twins, both named Otto, although one is called OTTO (loudly) the other otto (softly). Their mother, played by Tyne Daly, is both overbearing and needy, and has trouble distinguishing the two, although she knows one of them loves her and the other doesn't (this immediately struck me as a false note--my sister has identical twins, and she can tell them apart instantly, even by just their voices or the way they walk). The Ottos father ran away after their birth, and was replaced by a dapper doctor, played by Brian Murray, who looks over everything in a rather bemused fashion.

The characters of this play know they are characters in a play, and frequently make asides to the audience. The set is simply planks of bleached wood, with a couple of beds, suggesting the play is taking place inside the mind of its creator. At one point the mother and the doctor are supposed to be in the outdoors for a picnic, but the doctor comments that this place looks like any other. At another point the mother is called a cunt by otto's girlfriend, and she is horrified and says, "You can't say that on stage!"

The plot of the play is moved forward by OTTO, who declares that he not only wishes to become Chinese, but also that otto is no longer his brother, which sends the spurned twin into an identity crisis. The dialogue is full of plays on words and verbal noodling, with lots of characters repeating what is said to them, suggesting an Abbott and Costello routine. Some of this is very funny, and other times just seems smug and supercilious. At the end of the play I got the sense that Albee was trying to have a say about just what it is that makes us who we are, but because I never believed that these characters were real people that attempt at pathos fell rather flat.

The acting was generally good. I very much enjoyed Brian Murray as the doctor, who had most of the best lines. Daly seemed to go in and out of her characterization, and I had trouble hearing some of her lines. The two young men who played the Ottos (who are not brothers, but did look an awful lot a like--I would sign them up for a production of A Comedy of Errors) were fine, as was Charlotte Parry as the girlfriend of otto.

Albee will be 80 years old in March, and one can be glad that he shows no sign of slowing down, but I hope his future work is a bit more hefty that this one.