THE second production by The interesting Tall Tales Theatre Company brings dramatist Edward Albee back to the Dublin stage after a long absence, in the Irish premiere of Three Tall Women. It is an odd, if original, approach to what is virtually a monologue although the words are entrusted to a cast of three.
The first act introduces a trio of women named A B and C, respectively aged 91, 52 and 26. It is set in the affluent home of A, who is clearly suffering from the dementia of extreme age. B is her companion nurse, kindly and attentive to her physical and psychological needs. C is from the solicitors who look after A's muddled affairs, and is a rather soul observer of her meanderings.
Most of the act trundles along in a prolonged exposition of character and background setting, and A suffers a stroke to conclude it. When the second act begins, she is in a comatose condition and wearing an oxygen mask, which partly serves to conceal the change in her hair colour. This is as well, because she reappears in comparatively vigorous shape, and we soon become aware that the three women have, as it were, coalesced, and now represent critical ages and stages of A.
Now they can really communicate, and on what might be called a descending scale; A knows all about B and C, B is similarly - downcast? - and C wants to know what's coming to her. The tentative references in act one are developed through early romance, marriage for money, a bout of infidelity, the birth and later alienation of a son. death of the husband from cancer, the closing in of the shadows. C is horrified at the future laid bare before her, and general questions are raised about the best and worst of life.
The gist and thrust of the play lie in this distillation of a life's experience, and it comes across as rather less than accumulated wisdom, at variance even with A's earlier accounts of herself. The three dimensional monologue is finally clever rather than persuasive, and the life it delineates is not of a kind that touches common experience, not empathetic. It engages the intellect, but bypasses the emotions.
Good acting injects much vitality into the production, from Maureen Collender, Deirdre Kinahan and Gertrude Montgomery, directed by Karl Shiels. The set design by John Walsh makes good use of the small studio space.
