The Lady From Dubuque

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The Lady from Dubuque, a play by Edward Albee, opened on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre on January 31, 1980. It closed there after a mere 12 performances.

This production, directed by Alan Schneider, starred Albee favorite Irene Worth (who had originated leading roles in his plays Tiny Alice and Listening) and veteran Earle Hyman alongside a youthful cast headed by Broadway debutante Frances Conroy alongside costars such as Maureen Anderman (who had appeared in Albee's 1975 play Seascape and the 1976 revival of his Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which he also directed), Tony Musante and Celia Weston. Despite the play's short run, it won Featured Tony nominations for Miss Anderman and Mr. Hyman.

The play's first act finds three young couples (Sam + Jo hosting Fred + Carol and Lucinda + Edgar) engaging in party games like Twenty Questions. Jo's angry bitterness becomes apparent earlier than its source, which is the terminal disease that tortures her and will soon claim her life. At the end of the act, after the mounting tension drives the guests to leave, Sam carries Jo up to bed. Suddenly, a fourth couple appears from the wings: a glamorous older woman (Elizabeth) and her black companion (Oscar). She asks the audience, "Are we in time? Is this the place?" and answers her own questions: "Yes, we are in time. This is the place." The curtain falls.

In Act One, the recurrent theme of the game was "Who are you?" Now that question becomes more serious, as Sam, shocked by the appearance of these strangers in his house, repeatedly demands that Elizabeth reveal her identity. She eventually insists that she is Jo's mother, come from Dubuque, Iowa "for her daughter's dying". However, Sam knows Jo's mother as a small, balding woman with purple hair, who lives in New Jersey and is estranged from Jo, and Elizabeth is clearly not she. Unfortunately for Sam, who vigorously protests the veracity of Elizabeth's claims, Jo runs into Elizabeth's arms and never questions her appearance or identity. Whoever she and Oscar may -- or may not -- be, they clearly represent the coming of Death, something familiar and unknown. At the end of the play, Oscar carries the dying Jo upstairs one last time. As the devastated Sam demands once more to learn Elizabeth's true identity, she ends the play with this line: "Why, I'm the lady from Dubuque. I thought you knew. [to the audience] I thought he knew."

Elizabeth's curtain lines, quoted above, both typify the Pirandellian style of the play's dialogue, in which characters frequently make comments directly to the audience. (The first occurs very early, when Jo, observing the Twenty Questions game in progress, looks out at the audience and asks, "Don't you hate party games?")

Plays by Edward Albee

The Zoo Story | The Death of Bessie Smith | The Sandbox | Fam and Yam | The American Dream | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | The Ballad of the Sad Cafe | Tiny Alice | Malcolm | A Delicate Balance | Everything in the Garden | Box | Sandbox | All Over | Seascape | Listening | Counting the Ways | The Lady From Dubuque | Lolita | The Man Who Had Three Arms | Finding the Sun | Marriage Play | Three Tall Women | The Lorca Play | Fragments | The Play About the Baby | The Goat, or, Who is Sylvia? | Occupant | Peter & Jerry