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

of the play. The drama opens with the word "finding the sun" uttered nine times by each of the characters. The last page links the wish of the play's beginning with Edmee's inquiry and search for her son. "Fergus", the name of the son that disappeared in the meantime, is uttered also nine times like the wish to find the sun. This time, the 'sun' is the 'son', and their relation is made obvious since the drama opens with the search for the celestial body that is found and ends with the search for the son, who will not be found. The eight characters of the play are people on a beach in bright sun. They all tend to find the best places for their bodies, therefore they move from place to place in order to "find the sun". Abigail and Benjamin, Cordelia and Daniel, and Gertrude and Henden are married couples. Edmee and Fergus, a mother and her son represent the last symbolic 'couple'. Abigail is twenty-three, with "pinched" features. She is neither pretty nor plain. Her husband, Benjamin is thirty. He is blond and "willowy handsome". The two are married but seem to have problems in their marriage. Cordelia is twenty-eight and she is "attractive in a cold way", with a "good figure". Her husband, Daniel is thirty-seven, "dark, tall and good-looking". Cordelia and Daniel seem to have a working agreement in their marriage. Gertrude, who is a sixty year-old elegant outdoors woman, is Cordelia's mother. She is married to Henden, who is seventy and "looks like a diplomat". He is also Daniel's father. Edmee is forty-five and she is a stylish matron that takes excessive care of her son, Fergus, who is the youngest character in the play. He is sixteen. At a point in the play Henden even tell Fergus that there is "no such an age", although symbolically their age is correlated by the number seven that denotes both the young man and the old man. Henden is seventy (70 as 7 + 0 = 7), Fergus is 79 sixteen (16 asl +6 = 7)". Edmee has an enigmatic name that can be " When talking about his own age, the playwright quotes this passage of the old man's and young man's age from Finding the Sun. "For his seventieth birthday on March 12, 1998, he [Edward Albee] Hew back to New York from Houston for a small dinner party given in his honor by Elizabeth McCann. That afternoon he spoke about aging: 'When the old man in Finding the Sun asks the boy how old he is, the boy says: "I'm 16, and the man says, "Don't be silly: There's no such an age". Sometimes I feel sixteen, sometimes younger. Sometimes I feel a healthy forty. The only way I ever feel anything close to my age is the way people treat 166