19:30, Thu 10th – Fri 11th March 2011 at Homerton Auditorium
Lent Week 7

The protagonist of the play, a compelling woman of more than ninety years old, reflects on her life with a mixture of shame, pleasure, regret, and satisfaction. She recalls the fun of her childhood and her marriage, when she had an overwhelming optimism for her future. Yet she bitterly recalls the negative events that resulted in regret: her husband’s extramarital affairs, the death of her husband, and the estrangement of her gay son. The woman’s relationship with her son is the clearest indication that Albee was working through some troubled memories of his own in Three Tall Women. The playwright was raised by conservative New England foster parents who disapproved of his homosexuality. Like the son in his play, he left home at eighteen. Albee admitted to the Economist that the play ‘‘was a kind of exorcism. And I didn’t end up any more fond of the woman after I finished it than when I started it.’’