February 2, 2007

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

eveningsout

A day at the beach

A human couple meet a lizard one in this Albee revival

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Columbus-Edward Albee, born in 1928, is one of America's oldest living playwrights and certainly one of its best ever. He has redefined the theater at every stage of his career, beginning with the early one-acts like The Zoo Story and into his recent career with gems like Three Tall Women and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?

In 1996, he received a Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award and in 1997 he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton. At the Kennedy Center Honors Ceremony in 1996, Albee was praised for his impact on American drama. He has three Pulitzer Prizes to Eugene O'Neill's four, a record that Albee can easily catch up with or best, given that he is still writing at a feverish pace.

One of his earlier works, Seascape, is getting a new production at the Contemporary American Theater Company in Columbus, beginning February 2.

Albee won the second of his Pulitzers in 1975 for Seascape, which explores an unexpected meeting where an older couple encounters a lizard couple on the beach. Nancy and Charlie, bored with life and each other, begin a relationship with Leslie and Sarah, reptiles who emerge from the sea.

Two disparate couples also took center stage in what is, perhaps, Albee's most famous piece, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Seascape was revived on Broadway in 2005 with George Grizzard and Frances Sternhagen. It is CATCO's third Albee production, after The Zoo Story in the 1990-91 season and Three Tall Women during the 2000-01 season.

Albee's life has been as interesting as his work.

These days, as he occupies the position of elder statesman of the American theatrical scene, he has focused much of his energy to education and encouraging new writers. That hasn't stopped him from writing avidly, creating some of his best works in recent years.

Albee, who publicly came out as gay very late in life, has always written works about outsiders, knowingly or subconsciously. In Three Tall Women, a play whose central character is a dying woman who has spurned her gay son, Albee no longer cloaks gay characters and themes under metaphors and code. The Goat, or Who is Sylvia, a tale of taboo love between a married man and a real goat, has been seen as a parable about homosexuality and society's views on it. Even in The Zoo Story there are some powerful hints as to the repressive gayness of the main character Jerry, who seems so hungry for human connection.

Of course, in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? critics have long held that George and Martha's heterosexual marriage is simply a metaphor for a same-sex relationship.

Seascape too can be seen as a parable of sorts: coping with the unknown, getting to know the other, the outsider, as the humans must get to know the lizards. The beauty of a play like Seascape is its funny yet poignant message that when the humans and lizards start to commiserate about life and love they have so much in common.

The production is directed by CATCO founder and artistic director Geoff Nelson. Playing the lizards Leslie and Sarah are Jonathan Putnam, CATCO's associate artistic director and Robin Gordon, its artistic administrator. Putnam recently portrayed Crumpet the elf in CATCO's holiday production of David Sedaris' The Santaland

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Charlie (Dudley Swetland) and Nancy (Kerry Shanklin) meet some unusual new friends in CATCO's production of the Edward Albee play Seascape.

Diaries. Gordon is in her seventh season with the theater, and has previously performed in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Laramie Project, about the Matthew Shepard murder in Wyoming.

Dudley Swetland and Kerry Shanklin play the human couple Charlie and Nancy. Swetland, a well-known actor in the Cleveland area, has appeared in The Laramie Project, and directed The Fantasticks at CATCO. Shanklin's past CATCO productions include Albee's Three Tall Women, and gay playwright Terrence McNally's A Perfect Ganesh.

There are three previews for Seascape: February 2 and 3 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, February 4, at 2 p.m. Opening night is Sunday, Feb. 4, at 7 p.m. and the show runs through February 25, with tickets ranging from $40 to the two "$11 @ 11" shows.

Performances are in the Studio One Theater at the Vern Riffe Center, located at 77 South High St. in downtown Columbus. Tickets can be purchased at the box office at 41 East State St., next to the Ohio Theater, by calling 614-469-0939, or at Ticketmaster.

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