Two very good things happened downtown in Houston last evening. The Astros beat the Yankees 4-2 in the first game of the American League Championship series, and Edward Albee’s Seascape (1975) opened at the Alley. Both events were winners.
Two married couples meet on a beach. One is very human (Charlie and Nancy); one is quite lizard (Leslie and Sarah), although the knobby-scaled couple speaks English. It’s a classic Albee situation, albeit surreal and absurd, in that the couples confront each other over love, illusion, lost dreams, joyless marriage, petty hurts, past sex, the very meaning of life. Albee bandies these themes like the master dramatist he is, juggling with finesse and surprising us with his word play.
In an almost mirror image, these four are the kinder, gentler versions of the bitchy, searing couples in his masterpiece, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962). Oh, the sting is still there, but it’s now evolved into a softer exploration of what it’s like to be human.
Before the undersea creatures crawl over the sand dunes near the end of the first act, Charlie and Nancy (Philip Goodwin and Franchelle Stewart Dorn) have dissected their long life together. Retired, with grown children off on their own, and apparently well-off financially – they could afford to fly around the world visiting beaches, as Nancy dreams of doing – Charlie wants nothing more than to relax and nap away his remaining time. “I want to do nothing.”
Nancy chaffs under this wimpy desire. She wants life to continue, she wants new horizons, challenges, she wants to live in the now. She wants “more” and doesn’t want to “settle.” She doesn’t want to “wrap it up in a piece of cloth and put it away,” in one of Albee’s precise, delicious descriptions. When Charlie recalls his youthful folly at the beach where he would hold rocks in his hands and sink to the bottom being one with the creatures and the sea, she pleads with him to relive it. “Be young again,” she coaxes, then nags. No, he’s content as he is. They bitch back and forth like the old married couple they are, reliving the past in fragrant monologues as clouds drift overhead as Izmir Ickbal’s superb lighting ripples in reminiscence.
When the couple reaches a gentle impasse, Leslie and Sarah (Zachery Fine and Raven Justine Troup) appear, and the play takes a lovely veer into Aesop territory via Albee’s patented wise comic voice. The two anthropomorphic creatures, wary at seeing these soft white things on the beach who, under Nancy’s instructions, lie on their backs with feet up, smiling like loons, sniff and prod them, just as wary. The creatures scurry over the dunes like wayward iguanas, dragging their impressive tails behind them. (Nicole Wee’s costumes, for human and creature, are exceptional. The lizards shimmer as if phosphorescent.)
After introductions and lessons on how to shake hands, the humans attempt to school the lizards about life on earth: various emotions like love, loneliness, sadness; flying in a plane; the theory of evolution; child rearing. Nancy even begins her explanation of evolution with “once upon a time.” The creatures’ curiosity is played like a well-oiled vaudeville routine. It’s tremendously funny, until Charlie pushes Leslie’s buttons – both alpha males in their own way – and Leslie attacks.
The troubles eventually pass, the dusk sky burns orange, and the creatures rush to return to the sea away from these troublesome land creatures. But Leslie and Sarah are no longer comfortable under the sea; they don’t belong. They ‘re hungry for this new land. As if changing before our eyes, they stand on their feet. Some strange force holds them back from returning down under. Nancy pleads with them to stay. “We could help you.” The lizards, now fully standing, turn to face the human creatures. “All right, begin,” says Leslie as the lights dramatically turn them into silhouettes. And with this dramatic flourish, Albee ends his mysterious, provocative, and tender fairy tale.
Beautifully limned by four non-Alley actors, ingeniously directed by Nathan Winkelstein, and set in Kevin Rigdon’s flavorsome sand-and-driftwood world, suffused with the rich sonic atmosphere from Sharath Patel – gulls, airplanes roaring overhead, crashing waves just over the dunes, Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winner is thoroughly entertaining in its oddness, prickly in its observations on life and marriage, and delightfully puzzling in its meaning. Albee slyly implies that Leslie and Sarah might eventually morph into Charlie and Nancy. Or maybe Charlie and Nancy are modern avatars of Leslie and Sarah. Whatever you decide, Seascape is one of Albee’s wonders, and the Alley’s production is another one.
So are the ‘Stros.
Seascape continues through November 13 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays, through Thursdays and Sundays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at the Alley Theatre, 615 Texas. For more information, call 713-220-5700 or visit alleytheatre.org. $62-$75.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2022.
