Albee to Direct Judith Ivey & Myra Carter in American Dream and Sandbox

Judith Ivey and Myra Carter will star in a revival of Edward Albee's one-act plays The American Dream and The Sandbox at the Cherry Lane Theatre, directed by the playwright. Previews begin March 11, with opening night set for March 25. The limited engagement, timed to coincide with Albee's 80th birthday on March 12, will close on April 19. Discussions with the playwright will take place following the March 18 and April 8 performances.

Joining Ivey as Mommy and Carter as Grandma will be George Bartenieff as Daddy, Kathleen Butler as Mrs. Barker, Harmon Walsh as the American Dream and Jesse Williams as the Angel of Death in The Sandbox.

In The Sandbox, written in 1959, Albee introduces one of America's most dysfunctional families, a grasping, materialistic married couple who stage a perverse seaside idyll destined to end in the demise of the wife's aged mother. In this pioneering work, Albee manipulates clichés of language and social mores, breaking the fourth wall and purposefully destroying the audience's illusion of passive observation of the action of the play.

Written in 1960, The American Dream continues the story of The Sandbox's Mommy and Daddy, exploring the hollowness of the American dream and the fallacy of the ideal American family. The play attacks the substitution of artificial for real values and tells a startling tale of murder and morality that rocks middle-class ethics to their complacent foundations. Both plays debuted at the Cherry Lane Theater; The American Dream was first produced in 1961, and The Sandbox debuted in 1962.

Ivey won Tony Awards for her performances in Steaming and Hurlyburly and has appeared on Broadway in Follies, Voices in the Dark, Park Your Card in Harvard Yard, Blithe Spirit, Precious Sons, Piaf and Bedroom Farce. Off-Broadway, she starred in Women on Fire, A Madhouse in Goa and A Fair Country, among many other. In recent years, Ivey has turned to directing; while previewing her performance in the Albee plays, she will also be directing the off-Broadway comedy Secrets of a Soccer Mom, which opens March 20 at the Snapple Theatre Center.

Carter won numerous awards for playing "A" in Albee's Three Tall Women and has appeared off-Broadway in All Over, King John, Abingdon Square, Helen and The Secret Concubine. Her Broadway credits include Garden District, Georgy, Maybe Tuesday and Major Barbara.

Bartenieff, co-founder of the Theater for the New City, played Peter in Albee's Zoo Story and starred in Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape at the Cherry Lane in the 1960s.