ThatTheatreSite
That Theatre Site
Web Search
Malcolm
Home Library Set Shop Tech Dressing Room Cast Prep Box Office
By These Author(s):
All Over
American Dream, The
At Home at the Zoo
Ballad of the Sad Cafe, The
Bartleby
Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung
Box-Mao-Box
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Counting the Ways
Death of Bessie Smith, The
Delicate Balance, A
Dressed Like An Egg
Everything in the Garden
Fam and Yam
Finding the Sun
Fragments (Albee)
Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, The
Lady From Dubuque, The
Listening (Albee)
Lolita
Marriage Play
Play About the Baby, The
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung
Sandbox, The
Seascape
Three Tall Women
Tiny Alice
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Zoo Story, The
Title: Malcolm
Author(s): Edward Albee adapted from original from James Purdy
Licensing Agent: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
Genre: Drama
Length: Full Length
Male Roles: 16
Female Roles: 7
Extras: 0

Description: In the words of Stanley Kauffmann, the play, "…which is a fantasy of the corruption of innocence, concerns a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy, well-dressed and well-spoken, who-when we meet him-has been sitting daily on a bench in front of a hotel in a nameless American city. He is observed by an elderly astrologer named Cox, who speaks to Malcolm one day and learns that the boy is waiting for his father, who has disappeared. Cox seizes psychological dominance over him and sends him on a series of visits ostensibly to integrate him with the world but which ultimately destroy him. Malcolm visits a December-May couple (she is a young former prostitute, he is an ancient who claims to be 192), a middle-aged couple (he is ludicrously rich, she is attended by four lovers in white suits), a hip couple (an author and a painter) and a blonde pop singer, who takes the child as her latest husband and kills him with drink and sex. All these characters know one another. They are further linked within the play because two of the principal actors…who play Cox and the prostitute…are also used to play other roles. At the end, all of them gather around Malcolm's deathbed, mourning what they have lost.

(c) 2007, 2008 - ThatTheatreSite.com - Site problems may be brought to attention of Webmaster