A reading at NYCPlaywrights June 25, 2008
Cast
Ann Farthing
Nick Fondulis*
Wayne Henry
Lori Kee*
Mike Selkirk
Phoebe Summersquash
Reagan Wilson
*member AEA
The Pooh Story
Two people. A bench in Central Park. A Bear of Very Little Brain. A parody of a classic American play.
* Lee - crazy person - Wayne
* Chris - sane person - Mike
* Police officer - Nick
* stage directions - Phoebe
Edward Albee's plays really annoy me, and I'm sick of him being such a sacred cow. Lee's manner of speaking in THE POOH STORY echoes an Albee quote I found online here:
Albee describes 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."
Not only is Albee full of himself, his use of the term "emasculation" really chaps my hide. And his attitudes about "the American Scene" are completely antiquated. Just like THE ZOO STORY. I realize that saying such a thing is tantamount to heresy, since the Great Men of the Arts are the liberal equivalent of the Pope and various other religious holy men.