Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)
Studies - Réka Cristian: Edward Albee's Castings
drama tells everything about an unnamed American couple, which is unable to have an offspring in the household. Mommy and Daddy have already bought/adopted a child whom they have mutilated and dismembered in a process of dissatisfaction with the bought 'product' of the market economy. As Lee Baxandal pointed out, the characters of Albee are interrelated and cohesive in almost all of his plays because "the heart of his technique is an archetypal family unit" 51 where all the dilemmas, defeats, hopes and values of the American society —as the playwright sees them —are "tangibly compressed". As Albee writes in the Preface of the play, the drama is hoped to be one that "transcends the personal and the private". The American Dream is CI filled with references to the playwright's life", which are represented here in an abrasive manner. As Anita M. Stenz pointed out, it is a "nightmarish mad-cap cartoon" of emotional crippling in the family that leads to excessive materialism and hypocrisy in the drama, which has an abrasive satirical tone. There is no separate description of the characters, their features can be seen through the course of the play. Mommy was a "deceitful little girl" and married Daddy because of money: "We were poor! But then I married you, Daddy, and now we're very rich." 5 4 The stereotypical roles in the family of The American Dream are changed since. During the plot time Mommy is the phallic woman, the mater familias of the household. Daddy was once "firm", "decisive", and "masculine" that made Mommy "shiver" and "faint" (and as an additional power attribute, he wanted to be a Senator but then changed his mind and wanted to be Governor). Despite his aims in the past, Mommy calls him a "hedgehog" because of his soft nature. Daddy is "turning into a jelly", he becomes indecisive and therefore Mommy says that he is "a woman" but not like Mrs. Barker nor like Mommy. Mrs. Barker is the professional woman of the Mommies grotesque gallery of Albee's dramas, who M Lee Baxandall "The Theater of Edward Albee". In Alvin B. Kernan The Modern American Theater (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1967), 80-81. 1, 2 Mel Gussow Edward Albee: A Singular Journey. A Biography (London: Oberon, 1999), 141. Anita Maria Stenz Edward Albee: The Poet of Loss (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1978), 25. M Edward Albee The American Dream. In New American Drama (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), 30. 156
