Tiny Albee

Malcolm. The quest for a father, the spectral son, the possessive bitch-mother, the world as supreme castrater --these are themes, roles and patterns that have obsessed Edward Albee from the days of The Sandbox and The American Dream to Virginia Woolf and Tiny Alice. In this adaptation of James Purdy's novel Malcolm, he finds all his own vintage wines in another man's cellar. The trouble is that these wine bottles are now empty, and the wind whistles over them all evening with a low, monotonous, deadly moan.

Malcolm (Matthew Cowles) is a 15-year-old who looks like frosting and is chock-full of Innocence. A kind of satanic hotelier takes him in tow and dispatches him, like one of nature's naivest bellboys, to the fetid rooms of earthly existence. Along the way, there is a series of symbolic betrayals: by friendship (in the person of an ancient coot in a Confederate uniform); by wealth (in the form of an alcoholic hag and her fluttery entourage of butterfly boys); by art (as represented by a seedy writer-painter couple); and by sex in the nymphomaniacal guise of a torrid pop-swinger (Jennifer West). They kill Malcolm with corruption.

While the play has flickers of wit and moments of poignance, it is less a drama than an exercise in computer programming. Albee has fed into it only such data as will produce the answer that this is the worst of all possible worlds. And just as Aldous Huxley spoke of "murderee" types, Malcolm is a corruptee--he invites corruption. He is dumb, passive and available, and he lacks all strength of purity. The healthy organism rejects disease; the pure spirit resists evil. As for the spectacle of the supine young Adonis having his flesh and heart beaked out by grotesque female vultures, the ritual is overly familiar and more than a bit of a drag. Lolling in this effete bordello of his imagination, Albee achieved his first quick flop (seven performances) and his tiniest play.

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