In a recent interview with Alexis Soloski, playwright Edward Albee discussed Thornton Wilder and the Barrow Street Theatre production of Our Town. Read the full interview in the Village Voice.
Edward Albee has won Obies, Tonys, Pulitzers, and membership in a pantheon of American playwrights that includes Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller. (He thinks Thornton Wilder ought to make the list, too.)
VV: [Academics] talk about you as part of a tradition of great American playwriting, as an inheritor to O'Neill, to Williams, to Miller.
EA: Everybody forgets the most important of those: Thornton Wilder. If you're going to have those three others on that list, you have to include Wilder. O'Neill is a very powerful playwright, but he has a tin ear. Wilder had a beautiful ear. Especially with Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. That talent is extraordinary.
VV: Have you seen the revival of Our Town?
EA: Oh, it's the best production of it I've ever seen. Without question. Because it understands that the play is not a Christmas card. It's a tough, existentialist play. If you're not crying in the first 10 minutes that you're there, you're at the wrong play.
VV: I think I started crying during the last 10 minutes.
EA: Once you've seen it, when you go back and see it again, you start crying a lot earlier.
