Why We Can All Relate to ‘Three Tall Women’
Performers
Tony nominee Alison Pill on the prescience of Edward Albee’s 27-year-old play
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Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women was clearly not written in the digital era. A lawyer makes a house call that would now be done by Skype; bills are settled by mail, not online; and the only hint of a cell phone came when one trilled in the audience (seriously, turn those things off). Yet the play feels incredibly current.
Not that she’s a long-suffering saint. Quite the opposite. “These are not easy women to get along with,” admits Pill, a stage veteran who was nominated for a Tony for The Lieutenant of Inishmore. “They’re all difficult. They all think they’re all right all the time. And I can definitely relate to that.”
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In interviews then, Albee said he wrote the play to process his mother’s death. The two had been estranged for decades, and they reunited briefly — though not warmly — before she died. Those circumstances are reflected in Three Tall Women. Although the character of The Boy never speaks, he is spoken of. “Albee writes about his own part in it — what an impossible human he was too,” explains Pill. “These women were so easily put into a box, and it’s not fair. Yes, she’s a horrible person. But she’s also many other things.”
Albee described writing the play as “a kind of exorcism,” and at points it plays like one. In Act Two, each woman gets a cathartic monologue. Pill’s is perhaps the most heartrending. As C learns from A and B what her future has in store, she begs someone — the older women, or God — to assure her that her “best times haven’t happened yet.”
The play’s three disparate vantage points on life are what make it so universal. It’s one specific woman’s story, yes, but it’s also our collective journey, regardless of age or gender. “A couple of young women on the edge of turning 26 came to see it, and they related to my speeches,” says Pill. “But my husband, who is now in his forties, looks at Laurie’s speech at the end about having a 360-degree view of the world. We all age, we all die, we all lose family and friends. We watch that happen to our parents. Anybody who is a human will have something to say about this show.”
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Follow Michael Martin at @martinized. Follow TDF at @TDFNYC.
Top image: Alison Pill, Glenda Jackson, and Laurie Metcalf in Three Tall Women. Photos by Brigitte Lacombe.
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MICHAEL MARTIN