Playwright Edward Albee dies at the age of 88

Albee’s most famous work was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It ran for more than a year and half – and enthralled and shocked theatergoers with its depiction of stifling academia and of a couple whose relationship has been corroded by dashed hopes, wounding recriminations and drink. Albee said Turner brought Martha in his play “Virginia Woolf” alive in a way he hadn’t felt since Uta Hagen originated it in the ’60s.

A half-century later, Albee’s audacious drama about a love affair between man and beast, “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?”, won another Tony, ran for almost a year and staved off the critical despair, however briefly, that the commercial theater could no longer support serious drama. Seascape, starring Frances Sternhagen and George Grizzard, was revived in 2005, and A Delicate Balance, with Glenn Close and John Lithgow, was revived in 2014. That was made into a 1973 film starring Katharine Hepburn and Paul Scofield.

Albee’s unconventional style won him great acclaim but also led to a almost 20-year drought during which he had little critical or commercial success, before his 1994 play Three Tall Women garnered his third Pulitzer Prize. He was also feted with a special Lifetime Achievement at the Tony Awards in 2005.

Born March 12, 1928, Albee was adopted shortly thereafter and grew up in Larchmont, N.Y.

Born in Virginia in 1928 and adopted at 18 days old, Albee grew up in Westchester County outside NY.

An unconventional student, Albee attended several schools, including The Choate School in Wallingford, Conn., from which he graduated in 1946, and Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., from 1946 to 1947.

He moved to New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1950s, finding a more sympathetic environment in the avant-garde scene, where he wrote “The Zoo Story” that marked his breakthrough in theater. He was a member of the Dramatist Guild Council and president of the Edward F. Albee Foundation.

He was the recipient of a number of awards, including the National Medal of the Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1966.

American playwright Edward Albee in England where the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) are performing his play “A Delicate Balance”.

With Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and 1964’s Tiny Alice, Albee shook up a Broadway that was dominated at the time by Tennessee Williams, Miller and their intellectual disciples. Running 582 performances, Albee took home Obie and Drama Desk Awards.

The death was confirmed by Albee’s personal assistant.

Actor Bill Irwin, playwright Edward Albee and actress Kathleen Turner pose for photographs after the curtain call during opening night of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”.