Malcolm - Acting Edition

by Edward Albee, from the novel by James Purdy

• ISBN13: 9780822207191
• ISBN10: 0822207192
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1971-12-01
• Publisher: DRAMATISTS PLAY SERVICE INC

Summary

THE STORY: In the words of Stanley Kauffmann, the play, ...which is a fantasy of the corruption of innocence, concerns a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy, well-dressed and well-spoken, who-when we meet him-has been sitting daily on a bench in front of a hotel in a nameless American city. He is observed by an elderly astrologer named Cox, who speaks to Malcolm one day and learns that the boy is waiting for his father, who has disappeared. Cox seizes psychological dominance over him and sends him on a series of visits ostensibly to integrate him with the world but which ultimately destroy him. Malcolm visits a December-May couple (she is a young former prostitute, he is an ancient who claims to be 192), a middle-aged couple (he is ludicrously rich, she is attended by four lovers in white suits), a hip couple (an author and a painter) and a blonde pop singer, who takes the child as her latest husband and kills him with drink and sex. All these characters know one another. They are further linked within the play because two of the principal actors...who play Cox and the prostitute...are also used to play other roles. At the end, all of them gather around Malcolm's deathbed, mourning what they have lost.