Were Critics Swept Away by the LCT Revival of Edward Albee's Seascape?

Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize winning Seascape is back on Broadway, courtesy of Lincoln Center Theater. The play, directed by Mark Lamos, is now enjoying a limited engagement at the Booth Theatre with George Grizzard and Frances Sternhagen starring as the show's human couple, and Elizabeth Marvel and Frederick Weller as a younger--and not human--couple. The production officially opened on the Great White Way on November 21. Were critics swept away by the mounting?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

Rob Kendt in his Broadway.com Review: "Can a lizard cry? That we find ourselves wondering this, let alone forming such a thought in the first place, is a testament to the uncanny artistry of Edward Albee, whose 1975 oddity Seascape has the writer's signature blend of provocation, pretension, and put-on. Director Mark Lamos' splendid new Lincoln Center revival adds another shade that helps this strange, lopsided meditation blow by as smoothly as a sea breeze: playfulness… [Seascape] makes a case, tenuously but movingly, for a tragic view of human progress, linking the first act's marital squabble with the lizards' sense of not belonging, of needing to change but not knowing how. Lamos' extraordinarily sensitive cast brings out all of these levels, and still more."

Ben Brantley of The New York Times: "Seascape stands out, even alone, in the Albee canon as a full-length play that finds hope in the shadow of death and tender loving care in the institution of marriage. It is, in a way, the anti-Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? a work, by the way, that notoriously did not win the Pulitzer. So perhaps this revival will draw theatergoers who stayed away from Anthony Page's superb and all too short-lived production of Virginia Woolf earlier this year. Seascape does not leave you scratching your head in confusion and consternation the way much of Albee does. On the other hand, it does leave you hungry… This revival is notable for being perfectly likable and, to be honest, forgettable. Even more than the presence of talking lizards, these traits make Seascape a novelty within the body of work of a playwright who is rarely either."

Clive Barnes of The New York Post: "Michael Yeargan's sandy beach setting, swept with a blue sky and lit by Peter Kaczorowski's lively imitation of the sun, is by itself a pleasure to watch, as are the performances. Sternhagen seems to have distilled 'charming eccentricity' and bottled it like a patent medicine; Grizzard, gruff and craggy, his eyebrows constantly signaling skepticism, perhaps reveals the golden years more realistically. The lizards--wonderfully costumed by Catherine Zuber--turn their anthropomorphism to deliciously comic effect, with Weller's high-plumed, scaly-tailed machismo neatly matched by Marvel's proto-feminism. Go and see Seascape--tell them God sent you!"

Howard Kissel of The New York Daily News: "Sternhagen brings a crotchety charm to her role. Grizzard suggests the bewilderment of aging males beautifully. Needless to say, Frederick Weller and Elizabeth Marvel--in brilliantly detailed costumes designed by Catherine Zuber--are wonderfully droll as the lizards. The dunes that set designer Michael Yeargan has created have a powerful sculptural quality, heightened by Peter Kaczorowski's moody lighting. Thirty years have not made the play seem deeper, but the clarity of this production, directed by Mark Lamos, makes it more enjoyable."

David Rooney of Variety: "Director Mark Lamos and his remarkable cast bring clarity and perceptiveness to this ideal production, creating a bracing experience… Lamos strikes a superb balance between the naturalistic register of Sternhagen and Grizzard's wise performances and the physicality of Marvel and Weller. With their slinking, darting movements up and down the dunes, their piercingly alert eyes, tense limbs and cocked heads, the presence of the lizards at first seems comically menacing. But both actors get under the reptilian skin of Catherine Zuber's striking, sexy costumes."

Michael Kuchwara of The Associated Press: "Directed with the lightest of touches by Mark Lamos, this Lincoln Center Theater production sparkles with unexpected joy at the resilience of human--and not-so-human--nature."

Elysa Gardner of USA Today: "Seascape derives its humor and pathos both from the similarities that emerge between the couples and what the humans, particularly Charlie, perceive as a superiority endowed by evolution… Sternhagen captures Nancy's good-natured pluck, while Grizzard is fine as her warier but still vital spouse. And Weller and Marvel make a droll duo. For them, perhaps, it's not easy being green eight times a week. But this Seascape is a cinch to enjoy."

Linda Winer of Newsday: "Seascape, which opened last night in Mark Lamos' exquisitely wise and wistful production, is a smaller work than this same theater's revelatory 1996 revival of the 1966 masterwork, A Delicate Balance. Seascape, which won the 1975 Pulitzer but ran little more than two months, is a more gentle--dare we say hopeful?--view of the world than the better-known devastations by the theater's great emotional terrorist. This is not to say that the fanciful tragicomedy avoids Albee's big questions, those brutal irritations that pick at the thin skin of intimacy and mortality… But it also offers an almost joyful lesson about boundaries to be crossed and evolutionary decisions to be reconsidered."