Third Time’s a Charm: ‘Tall’ Tale Another Albee Winner

Edward Albee, who made an acclaimed return to the New York stage this season after a decade’s absence, won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Tuesday, his third, for “Three Tall Women.”

Although rumors circulated in New York theatrical offices for several days that Albee would win the prize, he said Tuesday afternoon that he wasn’t ready to celebrate yet: “You hear those things, but it’s something you should never count on, so you can’t plan celebrations.”

He spoke from Texas, where he teaches playwrighting at the University of Houston, but he will return to New York today for the official reopening of “Three Tall Women” at the Promenade Theater after a successful run at a small Off-Off-Broadway venue.

The Pulitzer comes near the end of a season that has seen a resurgence of interest in, and appreciation for, the playwright who made a dramatic impact on American theater 32 years ago with “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

The Tony Award he earned for that play was followed by two Pulitzer Prizes, for “A Delicate Balance” in 1967 and “Seascape” in 1975. But Albee had not had a new play produced here since 1983, when “The Man With Three Arms” closed quickly on Broadway after devastating reviews.

In the intervening decade, Albee has continued writing and has found hospitable stages in cities like Houston and Cincinnati, and in places as far afield as Vienna, where “Three Tall Women” had its world premiere in 1991.

In its first act, the winning play looks at three women of varying age preparing for the demise of the eldest. In the second act, the actresses become the eldest woman, at three stages in her life.

This season has been something of an Albee festival in New York, but it’s been happening blocks away from the bright lights of Broadway. The Signature Theater Company, which devotes its entire season to one playwright, chose Albee for 1993-94 and has staged seven of his works, most of them new to New York. The latest, “Fragments,” opened at Signature’s 77-seat theater Monday.

Although the critical and box-office success of “Three Tall Women” has been obvious for weeks, Albee was not prepared Tuesday to moderate his recent harsh statements about standards and commercial concerns of contemporary theater.

“Just because a play done Off-Off-Broadway gets a Pulitzer doesn’t mean anything’s different. . . . I try not to predict anything. You go through your career and you think a play is going to communicate and people think you’ve committed a (expletive). You write something else and people like it and you’re startled.”

There is no shortage of ideas for new plays in Albee’s mind. “I’ve got two I could write right away and a third one in a holding pattern,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Pulitzer Prize for music went to Gunther Schuller, 68, for his “Of Reminiscences and Reflections,” which received its premiere by the Louisville Orchestra, the composer conducting, Dec. 2, 1993.

A composer, conductor and music educator, the New York-born Schuller began his career as an instrumentalist, playing principal horn in the Cincinnati Symphony and in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. *

Times music writer Daniel Cariaga contributed to this report.