Favourite absurdist play? — Page 2

Here is a link to both the complete text for the play and a video of Jenny Stoller performing the complete play, brilliantly.

I was actually going to include THE SKRIKER but CLOUD 9 wins by a hair, if I were forced to choose between the two. I feel that someday THE SKRIKER may very well become my favorite merely for its timeless, fantastical, fairy-tale elements.

I never knew that about Yeats and Ibsen, nomdeplume! Or if I had I forgot... Churchill certainly has a certain Ibsen-ish cerebral chilliness about her work which I think turns some people off... much like Sondheim.

I would say she is the greatest female playwright, as well.

And the brevity of many of her works (SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN is only 10 mins long!) makes them easier to go back and re-read, which I do all the time. I probably can recite large chunks of A NUMBER at this point (what monologues! I would've killed to see Daniel Craig in the original production!).

P
SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN

Edward Albee is my favorite playwright and I have read his canon a few times over (the only author besides Shakespeare or Caryl Churchill whom I tend to re-read) and I must say that THE PLAY ABOUT THE BABY is a true anomoly is a very varied oeuvre and you really have to see it performed excellently, or read it very closely, to even understand what Albee was going for... and what all of it is trying to say. I know I'm being vague but Albee's plays tend to be very personal experiences (at least they are for me) and how you wish to perceive certain elements and why he chose to implement them has a definite effect on one's overall perception of the piece as a whole. I'm speaking specifically of the vaudeville artiface (complete with routine and comic banter), the intentional artificiality (aside: at previews out of town an animatronic baby walked onstage), and the surreality of the situation not to mention the very specific characterizations Albee maps out for the actors to follow for the duration of the drama (made even more explicit in the Actor's Edition, which I recommend over the published one for a number of reasons, specificity in particular).

To merely say "it was all a dream" is deductive, and I, for one, don't belive that even has anything to do with it.

And, I don't believe anyone who understands what the play is truly about (clue: it's not about the baby) could fail to recognize its originality and audacity, if nothing else.

P

Thanks for the referral to Seven Jewish Children. i've made a new thread for that.

I don't find either Ibsen or Churchill to be chilly or cerebral. Ibsen strikes me as humanist. Tom Stoppard and Peter Frayn I would call cerebral.

Other absurdist plays?