Fragments.

While watching Tennessee, I was reminded of a very different play that I had just seen at the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati. It was Edward Albee's new play, Fragments, which will be coming in this production, directed by the playwright, to the Signature Theatre in New York, a venue devoted to the works of Albee. One of the devices of the director and the characters in Tennessee is the telling of stories, ostensibly a way of passing the time, actually - through both the story and the interruptions-a way of revealing the characters. By using a similar device within a nonrealistic structure, Albee has created what his subtitle calls "A Concerto Grosso." That musical term, as it is defined within the play itself, consists of a series of solo turns and an occasional duet set within a group performance. The cast of Fragments consists of eight actors-four men and four women - who are identified by their real names. They tell stories, some comic (the account of trying to bury a dog frozen solid with his tail straight out), some serious, even sentimental (a loss-of-innocence reminiscence by the actor who wears an ACT-UP tee shirt). The tone of the work deepens from the first to the second act, ending with a ritual laying on of hands - like the end of a group therapy session-as an actor ruminates on his aging and his need to be touched. Given the subtitle of the play, the actors should be instruments only, but this is an Edward Albee work and, without the crutch of linear plot, they develop recognizable personalities. As a group, they seem to have accepted life on Friel's pier, but here, too, wonderful Tennessee hovers just over the horizon.

Shortly after I began to cover plays for Commonweal in 1968, 1 wrote my "last theater review" (January 22,1971). The magazine had decided to drop the stage column. The column and I were back by the end of the year (December 17), intermittently at first and then regularly. The magazine has decided once again to drop the stage column. After twenty-five years, I suspect that this is my last "last theater review" for Commonweal.