American playwright Edward Albee won his second Pulitzer Prize for drama for Seascape. Albee himself directed the Broadway production, which opened on January 26, 1975, at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre. Like many of Albee's plays, Seascape focuses on communication in interpersonal relationships, in this case between couples. Albee's first successful play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), and his first Pulitzer Prize-winning play, A Delicate Balance (1966), also concerned this topic. Seascape is different from these dramas on several counts. Seascape has lots of humor, fantasy, satire and absurdism.

Nancy and Charlie, a typical American couple on the verge of the major life change of retirement, are having problems in their relationship. On a deserted stretch of beach they are relaxing after a picnic lunch, talking idly about home, family and their life together. She sketches, he naps, and then, suddenly, they are joined by two sea creatures…lizards who have decided to leave the ocean depths and come ashore. Leslie and Sarah, the two lizards, have evolved to such a degree that they speak and act like humans and are compelled to seek life on land.

Initial fear, and then suspicion of each other, are soon replaced by curiosity and, before long, the humans and the lizards (who speak admirable English) are engaged in a fascinating dialogue. The lizards, who are at a very advanced stage of evolution, are contemplating the terrifying, yet exciting, possibility of embarking on life out of the water; and Nancy and Charlie, for whom existence has grown flat and routine, search the dialogue for answers to their most urgent questions. These answers are given with warmth, humor and poetic eloquence, and with emotional and intellectual reverberations that will linger in the heart and mind long after the play has ended.

Suzanne Boles directs.

This play is produced in cooperation with Dramatist Play Service with assistance from the Oklahoma Arts Council.