Margins
Everything in the Garden book cover
Everything in the Garden
1968
First Published
3.73
Average Rating
201
Number of Pages
There is a theme beneath the surface of this play, the corruption of money and the rottenness of a bigoted exurbia where conformity to its illiberal standards and its hypocritical show of respectability is all that counts. The scene is the suburban home of Jenny and Richard. The only thing that seems to stand in the way of their happiness is a lack of money. The action starts in an entertaining comedy-of-manners style. Then, abruptly, there enters a Mrs. Toothe in the menacing and fascinating person of Beatrice Straight who offers Jenny the opportunity to make more money than they have ever had, to buy a greenhouse and all the other luxuries that they require for their garden and their lives. Richard's realization that their newfound money is being earned by his wife's whoring comes almost simultaneously with the return of their 14-year-old son from school and a champagne cocktail party, which they are giving to impress their country club friends. As a result, his horror,
Avg Rating
3.73
Number of Ratings
123
5 STARS
26%
4 STARS
34%
3 STARS
27%
2 STARS
13%
1 STARS
0%
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Author

Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Author · 36 books

Noted American playwright Edward Franklin Albee explored the darker aspects of human relationships in plays like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) and Three Tall Women (1991), which won his third Pulitzer Prize. People know Edward Franklin Albee III for works, including The Zoo Story , The Sandbox and The American Dream . He well crafted his works, considered often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflected a mastery and Americanization of the theater of the absurd, which found its peak in European playwrights, such as Jean Genet, Samuel Barclay Beckett, and Eugène Ionesco. Younger Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel credits daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue of Albee with helping to reinvent the postwar theater in the early 1960s. Dedication of Albee to continuing to evolve his voice—as evidenced in later productions such as The Goat or Who Is Sylvia? (2000) — also routinely marks him as distinct of his era. Albee described his work as "an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen."

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