Tyne Daly, who plays Mother

This is Part III (of IV) of McCarter Artistic Director Emily Mann’s interview with Playwright Edward Albee. Click here for Part I and here for Part II. In the last installment, Albee had been telling Mann about the new draft of the play that he had just completed. The conversation continued:

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Emily Mann: Um, the mother. Can we just talk about her a little bit?

Edward Albee: Sure.

Mann: She interests me, you write the most complicated and interesting women. And she’s another one of your large characters.

Albee: She’s a tank, she batters her way through everything.

Mann: Yeah, yeah.

Albee: She’s convinced she’s right about everything.

Mann: I know. I actually like her a lot. I know she’s impossible…

Albee: Yes, right.

Mann: …but she really loves her sons.

Albee: Yes, of course.

Mann: And they, oddly, love her… Tell me, though, about this father. Did she know him long enough to truly be missing him, does she live for him to return, does she know that he won’t return, or do we not know?

Albee: No, we must remember it is not she who says he’s going to return.

Mann: It’s true. It’s Otto.

Albee: It’s Otto. She’s given up on the whole thing. “He’s never coming back. Nah.”

Mann: But [Otto] keeps bringing up the panthers and emeralds and she has to admit to the doctor that he did one time say he would bathe her in emeralds.

Albee: Yes. Pave her…

Mann: (laughing) Pave her in emeralds. So she, but she doesn’t really think he’s coming back.

Albee: No, of course not.

Mann: Okay, good, good. That’s how I read it too. All right.

Albee: The glory was too much.

Mann: Ah. I can’t talk to you about it because I haven’t read the new end. All right. Another day.

Albee: Do you want to read it now and then go on with the interview?

Mann: Can I?

Albee: Yeah, sure. Just read the last thing.

[Tape stops while Emily reads the new ending]

Mann: The former happy ending. Thank you, sir. Did you do any more on the body of it?

Albee: No, just a couple of things. It’s all in there… Nothing that you really have to worry about.

Mann: Okay. So I have just read the new ending of the play.

Albee: And everybody will have that before the reading.

Mann: I can’t wait to actually hear that.

Albee: It’s not a new ending, it’s a revised ending.

Mann: Right. It’s very complicated.

Albee: You are happy with it?

Mann: I am happy with it. I can’t wait to hear it. I love how complicated it is. I love the complexity of it, because the whole play is complicated and this keeps on complicating the complications, so I love that. Yeah, yeah, I think that it’s going to be wonderful. It’s tricky. You wrote a very tricky, hard one to pull off, but I think we will, we can do it.

Albee: I think you just play it the way its written, and it’ll work just fine.

Mann: Mm-hm.

End of Part III.

Part IV of the Mann/Albee interview is available here.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Directors' Diaries, Playwright's Pen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.