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| Mentor 4 CA |
US playwright Edward Albee, the
author of “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” has died aged 88.
Albee's assistant said he died on
Friday at his home on Long Island near New York. No cause of death was given.
A three-time Pulitzer Prize
winner, he was arguably America's greatest living playwright after the deaths
of Arthur Miller and August Wilson in 2005,
Albee was awarded Pulitzers for A
Delicate Balance, Seascape and Three Tall Women.
Often bleakly humorous, his plays
explored the darker sides of marriage, religion, raising children, and American
life.
His best-known work, Who's Afraid
of Virginia Woolf?, a portrait of a decaying marriage set over one evening, was
denied the 1963 Pulitzer Prize after debuting on Broadway the previous year.
The prize's advisory board ruled
that the work was not sufficiently "uplifting" because of its
profanity and sexual themes.
The work did win a Tony Award for
best play, and was later adapted for a film starring Richard Burton and
Elizabeth Taylor.
In 1996 he described the effect
of the play's success: "I find Virginia Woolf hung about my neck like a
shining medal of some sort - really nice but a trifle onerous."
The same year he was awarded a
National Medal of the Arts by then-president Bill Clinton.
Albee continued to write into his
70s, and 2008 saw the premiere of a new play, Me, Myself and I, about identical
twins.
A few years ago, before
undergoing major surgery, Albee penned a short statement to be published at the
time of his death: "To all of you who have made my being alive so
wonderful, so exciting and so full, my thanks and all my love," he wrote.
Albee's longtime partner,
sculptor Jonathan Thomas, died in 2005.
