Albee Festival One-Acts
In The Death of Bessie Smith, by contrast, Albee takes on race relations. An all-white medical establishment in Memphis in 1937 leaves the eponymous blues legend to die after a car crash. In a series of clunky, poorly structured scenes, Albee generously informs us that racism is really bad for black folks. It even turns one lonely admissions nurse into a cranky, self-loathing cuss. Chuck Smith’s production, with its haphazard staging, broad and unconvincing performances, and onslaught of bad southern accents, does the play no favors.
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Critic Martin Esslin identifies two levels of theater of the absurd, the deeper of them characterized by a full acceptance of the absurdist worldview. The more superficial and accessible level, he writes, consists of “its social criticism, its pillorying of an inauthentic, petty society.” And as the Goodman’s second program of one-acts fully demonstrates, Albee rarely ventures beyond this level.
Saddled with these insubstantial works, director Eric Rosen manages to give them precision, beauty, and the necessary swiftness. Like Bernatowicz, he makes simple, clear choices and molds his actors into cohesive casts who handle Albee’s texts with grace and maturity. In fact the slight feel of the entire program is a testament to Rosen’s skill–he exposes exactly what the playwright put on the page.
