Edward Albee's Seascape is currently at Lincoln Center Theater in a charming and poignant revival. The original production ran in New York in 1974, starred Deborah Kerr and Barry Nelson, and won The Pulitzer Prize.
In much of the first act the plot seemed similar to another Albee play. Nancy and Charlie, in many ways like George and Martha of Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, haggle, argue, cajole, talk of their past, and (mostly Nancy) plan about their future, as they sit along the seashore. It is a pleasure to see Frances Sternhagen again, aptly portraying the talkative and reminiscing wife, and George Grizzard as her more pensive and less idealistic husband.
Suddenly the two human-size lizards, complete with large tails, appear in many shades of green, risen to the seashore from beneath the waves: Leslie, well played by Frederick Weller, and his mate, Sarah, played with emotion by Elizabeth Marvel. At first hesitating, they do finally meet Nancy and Charlie towards the end of the first act.
Until the entrance of the green creatures, the play seemed familiar, too much like other Albee pieces leading one to wonder what was different from Virginia Woolf or Delicate Balance, what set this apart. But with the appearance of Leslie and Sarah, this changed. (Strange, though, that the creatures speak fluent American English, but we DO need to suspend belief in theater at times.) The second act gives us their discourses on love, faithfulness, caring, needing, evolution, pain and illness.
The point is driven home that as humans we have no choice but to feel these things, and Leslie and Sarah having advanced above the sea, and chosen to live on the land (at least part of the time), must now feel all the pain, suffering, and joy of being intelligible, feeling, thinking beings. They have no choice, since they have evolved so far. They are part of the evolutionary process. This is the theme of the play, what it is to be human, to feel, to suffer, to love and be happy.
That point is driven across well, and especially Sarah feels it as the female of the amphibious species, and acts it well. Leslie, like his totally human counterpart, Charlie, is more cautious, more critical, more skeptical but in the end, he, too, realizes that there is no turning back to the sea.
It is a play worth seeing, very worthy of this revival. Accolades to Michael Yeargan for the sets, Catherine Zuber for the amphibious costumes, Peter Kaczorowski for the lighting, Mark Lamos for direction, and Lincoln Center Theater for reviving this intellectual, yet very feeling, all-too-human play about our existence, and our needs.
