Well Albee

I was just reading Mel Gussow's biography of Edward Albee, published 20 years ago, and it made me realize something.  I used to compare Albee to Orson Welles--just as Welles' first movie, Citizen Kane, was his masterpiece, Albee's first show on Broadway, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? was a game changer.  Where do you go from there?  Plenty of people champion his later plays, but nothing he did afterwards really compared either to the impact or quality of his first hit.

But when you think about it, Albee is more like Quentin Tarantino (or Tarantino like him).  Tarantino started out with Reservoir Dogs, a small film that made a decent profit and introduced a new talent to the world, while his second, Pulp Fiction was a huge hit and a game changer. Albee started out with some notable one-act plays performed off-Broadway--especially The Zoo Story--which announced to the world a new playwright who might some day take his place alongside the greats.  Then he came up with his masterwork.

Certainly Tarantino has continued to do interesting work, and also make some big hits, but I don't think anything he's done in the past 25 years compares to Pulp Fiction, in impact or quality.  And Albee had a fair number of major plays to come after his Broadway debut--he won three Pulitzers and wrote such works as A Delicate Balance, Three Tall Women and The Goat Or Who Is Sylvia?  But nothing was the same as Virginia Woolf.

It must be tough when you spend your entire career competing against your younger self.