WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Yale Repertory Theatre, October 6–29, 2022

Questioning the On September 14, 1962, LIFE magazine ran an issue dedicated to “The TakeOver Generation.” Its first story, a foldout portrait gallery, featured “A RedHot Hundred.” The very first portrait among the alphabetically arranged faces of young, overwhelmingly white men was that of a gangly 34-year-old with dark hair and protruding ears, smiling in a slightly uncomfortable way: playwright Edward Albee.

Albee (1928–2016) was, in 1962, just coming into his own. Adopted at two weeks old by Reed and Frances Albee, the heirs of vaudeville impresario Edward F. Albee II (for whom he was named), Albee spent much of his adolescence being shuttled from one private school to another. After a brief flirtation with college, he moved to New York’s Greenwich Village and began to work odd jobs while writing poetry. A few years later, while visiting a friend at a writers’ retreat, he shared his poems with Thornton Wilder, author of Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, who suggested that Albee might try his hand at playwriting instead.

Albee followed Wilder’s advice, but it took him until the cusp of his 30s to find success in the theatrical form—and he found it not in the US but Germany.

Albee’s 1959 The Zoo Story, a bleakly funny play about a pair of New Yorkers from different classes meeting on a Central Park bench, was initially rejected by American producers. Thanks to a network of friends and contacts, it premiered in more avantgarde Berlin before returning to New York. Once home, the play made a splash among theater artists and afficionados, 11