Peremptory one moment, open and friendly the next and always teasingly erotic, Paff keeps tailoring seduction to suit the virginal uncertainties of Hurteau's ascetic Julian. He's fairly immune to Lawyer's mockery less so to all the luxury and to the quizzical fifth-dimensional possibilities suggested by Mark Anderson Phillips' slyly otherworldly Butler.īut the chief temptation is Alice, in a performance by Carrie Paff that makes her and Hurteau the twin, beautifully sculpted pillars on which the dramatic edifice rests. Wilson), Julian - a lay brother because of his lifelong problems with 'the use men put God to' - is confronted by all kinds of temptations. Once at the mansion, with its magnificent and lively model of itself in the library (smart sets by J.B. On behalf of the inconceivably wealthy Miss Alice, Lawyer offers the Church a multibillion-dollar grant on the condition that Cardinal send his beloved personal secretary, Julian ( Andrew Hurteau), to arrange terms.

It opens with a deliciously nasty, scarcely veiled psychological power struggle between Richard Farrell's fatuously pretentious Cardinal and Rod Gnapp's leering, ruthless Lawyer. Or simply Albee having all kinds of fun with concepts of faith to the point that sometimes one is tempted to observe, in the words of the butler named Butler, 'This is an endless metaphor.'īut often a very entertaining one.

Or it's about a plot to corrupt the Catholic Church, or maybe a conflict between a church that's strayed from its spiritual roots and a more blood-primitive, sacrificial faith. A mystery play - in both the religious and pop-culture sense - 'Alice' is an intense drama of one man's fatal wrestle with his faith.

Tiny alice by edward albee