Sand: Three Plays on a Beach
“Sand,” an evening of three one-acts from various points in Albee’s career, was developed by the playwright himself for the Signature Theatre Company, but there’s little here that Albee hasn’t revealed before. A Chicago premiere presented by Robert M. Stoeck, James M. Schneider, and their newly formed Sun Partners, “Sand” begins inauspiciously enough with Albee’s intentionally cryptic Box, in which a hooded figure in a sandbox tries vainly to catch a few fleeting glances of birds and sunlight overhead while a disembodied female voice delivers a monologue over a loudspeaker.
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As always in Albee plays, there are jarring and effective moments. Miserably doofy Abigail’s frighteningly nihilistic monologue about her hatred of the sun (“Why don’t you just go down?…Bring the ice down on all of us”) is especially well performed here by Cathy Bethurem. And the mischievous Jim Slonina gets some easy laughs as the predictably innocent 16-year-old son of the wickedly lusty Edmee, played with verve by Lila Michael. But structure, usually one of Albee’s strong points, is sorely lacking here. Under James M. Schneider’s generally fluid direction, focus moves uncomfortably among the couples on the stage, forcing those who aren’t speaking to mime conversations or activities until it’s their turn to speak. Too much of the play is taken up by dull, expository monologues that tell us things we already know, could easily have figured out for ourselves, or simply don’t care about. When Melissa Carlson as Cordelia steps forward into the light and throatily intones, “I imagine you’ve been wondering why I married Daniel,” the temptation is to yell back, “No, not in the slightest.” If the characters don’t provide such unwanted information in monologues, they give it to the conveniently curious Fergus, who’s good at asking questions that reveal character.
