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

The blindspot of the drama covers the issue of the lack of (any more) 'children' (referring to the book of intimacies). The child is a fictional one, like the son(ny boy) in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The penultimate page of the drama contains Gillian's recognition of the fact that children are not possible because the two sides of the couple have become similar (an allusion to a homograph insertion): "Are we supposed to get married again? I can't have children anymore, I can't make a full marriage: I'm shaped to you". The issue of the blindspot is connected with the passion induced by the drives. This passion is redefined by Gillian, who does not blame the lack of passion but rather its changeable nature. She explains that passion needs redefinition. However, both agree, passion is rooted in the rhetoric of love and hate, on which both have built their marriage, in which they are irrevocably intertwined and

—from time to time, as Jack shows with his intention of leaving and divorce

—confused. Gillian: Passion in a marriage never dies it changes. When the passion of passion wanes there are all the others waiting to rush in

— the passion of loss, of hatred, the passion of indifference; the ultimate, the finally satisfying passion of nothing. You know nothing of the passion; you confuse rut with everything.

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4 Counting the Ways

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5 is the bare analysis of He and She, two characters with generic names. The play aims the lack or loss of meaning in the relation between two people in marriage trying to escape the responsibility intimacy requires. The number two employed by the playwright in this drama evokes the symbolism of the number. Two means, as Philip C. Kolin wrote, "disunity, 6

4 Ibid., 37. The play has been compared with Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, "the very type of romantic play of the heart at which Albee aims his vaudevillian parody, although in fairness one must note that Albee admires Williams as a playwright... in many ways Albee's play is a direct response to the kind of theatre of the heart projected by Tenneessee Williams. The Glass Menagerie and Counting the Ways push aside the convention of realism. Both plays can be called memory plays. For Williams a depiction of memory "is seated predominantly in the heart", while for Albee memory is a non-emotional faculty." Philip C. Kolin "Edward Albee's Counting the Ways". In Julian N. Wasserman, ed. Edward Albee. An Interview and Essays (Houston: The University of St. Thomas, 1983), 136. 162