Three Tall Women

Passion, age and relationship doubts mixed successfuly in "Three Tall Women," a play by Edward Albee which was shown April 21 and 22 in the Nikola Vapcarov theatre Chamber Hall of Blagoevgrad.

Winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize, the play is currently performed at the finest theaters around the world. Professor Nedyalko Delchev embarked on the challenging task of appropriately staging such a meaningful, passionate, intelligent and well written play.

Though not widely advertised in the AUBG community, the play witnessed a full house on both nights.

A mixture of absurd and realism, the drama has a very deep beginning with a monologue of an old woman in her 90s (Ekaterina Sinadinova). She tells about her youth and marriage, looking back at her life with mixed feelings of shame and pleasure. The other two women, a lawyer and a caretaker, are the listeners. The youngest, a 26-year old lawyer (Kostadinka Karova), does not agree with the old woman’s opinion on relationships, happiness, and marriage, while the 52 year-old caretaker (Dilyana Slavkova)is already used to her constant ramblings about nothing. The first act ends with the old woman’s stroke.

In the second act the three represent the old woman from the first act, but at different periods of her life. Another interesting character is the woman’s gay son (Igor Gurkin), who is silent during the whole play, but creates tension and debate among them.

Acting in this play requires great skills and a good understanding of the problems set in it. All the three actresses were already experienced in performing on stage and had already proved to Delchev their impressive acting skills. "I have worked with all of them several times and knew what they can do. It was our last project and I wanted to challenge them," Delchev said.

Simulating the speech, gestures and moves of a 92 year-old woman is a very challenging task for a young actress, but Sinadinova managed to convince the audience. While the first act showed sings of overacting and stage fright, the second act was almost flawless.

The play is very deep and hard to understand until the very end. The students should have come to the theater prepared, but most of them failed to do so. That’s why some of them may have missed a lot of points. For example, many students admitted that they didn’t understand that the three characters represent three different periods of life for one woman. It was also challenging to grasp the complexity of the relationship between the woman and her son.

The play is overburdened with monologues and it requires absolute concentration. However, it was hard to follow the cues and remain concentrated all the time. "In the end of stressful semester all students would prefer something funny, but we have a variety of plays and two-three serious would not do any harm," Delchev said.

Although aspects of the play were missed by the audience, the play made a part of the audience think about the meaning of happiness and the sense of life. This witty, haunting and deep drama provided a good change from the funny and entertaining plays AUBGers are used to. Nedyalko Delchev and his acting cast managed to create a performance worth watching.