27 pages • 54 minutes read
The Sandbox
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BetaAct IChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act I Summary
The set is minimal, and the stage is mostly empty. There is a sandbox in the center of the stage with a child’s bucket and shovel. Downstage right, there are two plain chairs that face the audience. On the left side of the stage, there is a chair with a music stand. The backdrop looks like a bright morning sky. Near the sandbox, the Young Man, who is about 25, does exercises, which he will continue throughout the play. He only exercises his arms, moving them in such a way as to “suggest the beating and fluttering of wings. The Young Man is, after all, the Angel of Death” (35).
Mommy, who is 55 years old, and Daddy, who is 60, enter, and refer to each other only by the names Mommy and Daddy. Mommy announces that they have arrived at the beach and Daddy complains that he is cold. Mommy dismisses him, insisting that it’s perfectly warm and pointing out the Young Man, who seems comfortable in a bathing suit. The Young Man waves and smiles, calling, “Hi!” (35). Mommy decides that the spot they’ve found is ideal and asks Daddy’s opinion, but Daddy expresses indifference, responding, “She’s your mother, not mine” (35).
Mommy scolds him for stating the obvious and then calls for the Musician to come out, take their seat, and begin playing. Mommy and Daddy exit and return hauling Grandma, who is 86 years old, by her armpits, her feet not touching the ground. They drop Grandma in the sandbox, and she makes unintelligible noises. Mommy directs Daddy to the chairs, where they take their seats. The Young Man waves and greets them again. Daddy is unsure what to do and wonders if he and Mommy ought to have a conversation, but Mommy laughs curtly and tells him to go ahead, “If you can think of anything to say… if you can think of anything new” (37). Daddy agrees that he has nothing to say. Grandma makes more noises and Mommy shushes her, complaining when Grandma starts throwing sand and screaming. Mommy insists that all three of them must be still and wait quietly, urging the Musician to play.
Grandma screams again and when she gets no response from the characters onstage, she speaks directly to the audience, expressing indignation at having been dragged from her home and then tossed into the sand and left there. She starts to tell her life story, that she married a farmer when she was 17 years old, but he died when she was 30. Grandma yells at the Musician to be quiet so she can be heard. Grandma complains about the lack of respect to the Young Man who waves, smiles, and says “Hi!” (37). With the Musician quiet, Grandma tells the audience that when her husband died, she was left to “raise that big cow over there” (37) by herself, gesturing toward Mommy. Grandma asks the Young Man, “Where’d they get you?” (37) and he replies, “Oh… I’ve been around for a while” (37). Grandma admires him and asks him friendly questions. The Young Man tells her that he is from California and doesn’t know his own name because the studio hasn’t given him one yet.
Grandma asks if he is an actor, and the Young Man agrees that he is. Grandma returns to her life story, referring to Daddy disparagingly as what her daughter married, rather than who, because Daddy is rich. Grandma tells how Mommy and Daddy uprooted her from her farm and into their house, where they “fixed a nice place for [her] under the stove… gave [her] an army blanket… and [her] own dish” (38). Grandma calls offstage that the sky ought to be darkening and the lights and backdrop do, shifting to late at night. The Musician starts to play again. Daddy whines and Mommy tries to soothe and quiet him. A thunderous rumble sounds from offstage, and Mommy tearfully explains that it means that “the time has come for poor Grandma” (39). Without emotion, Daddy tells Mommy to be brave and Grandma agrees, mocking her. The Musician stops playing. Mommy wails. Grandma tells the stagehands to delay the morning because she, Grandma, isn’t ready. After a moment, Grandma pronounces herself nearly finished. The lights brighten again, and the Musician starts to play.
Grandma uses the toy shovel to pour sand on herself, complaining that it is ineffective. Cheerfully, Mommy announces that it’s time to stop grieving and move forward, which Grandma mocks. Mommy and Daddy stand up. Mommy waves at the Young Man, who once again smiles and says, “Hi!” (39). Mommy and Daddy go to Grandma, who crosses her arms over her chest and acts dead. Mommy comments, “Lovely! It’s… It’s hard to be sad… she looks… so happy. […] It pays to do things well” (40). Mommy excuses the Musician from playing and tells Daddy that it’s time to leave. Mommy and Daddy pronounce each other brave and exit.
Grandma tries to exit, too, but finds that she can’t get up. The Young Man quiets her, reminding her that he has a line. Grandma apologizes and the Young Man prepares himself and recites his line like an inexperienced actor: “I am the Angel of Death. I am… uh… I am come for you” (40). Grandma resists at first then understands. The Young Man kisses her and she folds her arms and smiles again. Grandma compliments the Young Man’s performance, and he smiles and blushes. The Musician plays.
Act I Analysis
As an absurdist play, The Sandbox destabilizes the hallmarks of structural constancy found in the American modified realism that was popularized in the 1950s by playwrights such as Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. Time is slippery and meaningless, depicted by the sudden shifts in the lit backdrop from day to night and then back to day again. The characters have no names or stable identities, known only by the titles that would be bestowed in relation to the child of the family, who is absent and unmentioned. But the empty place created by the missing child is filled by an actor, the Young Man, who serves as a sort of stand-in. What Mommy calls a perfect spot on the beach is nothing but a sandbox, highlighting both Mommy’s manipulative relationship to elements within the world of the play, and the artifice of all theatrical production itself, which requires a suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience to accept the events of the play as truth, within the context of the performance. Just as the characters lack a concrete relationship to the setting and circumstances of the play—they manipulate the time of day, presence of music, and more—the characters are also disconnected from each other, unable or unwilling to communicate. Albee wrote the play while estranged from his own parents, dedicating it to his late grandmother after missing her funeral because his parents didn’t inform him of her death. By infusing elements of meta-theatricality into The Sandbox, Albee dramatizes an imagined iteration of his grandmother’s funeral as a performance to be critiqued and evaluated, questioning the purpose of funereal rites and considering whether they are primarily for celebrating the life of the deceased person, or for the benefit of the survivors. Albee posits a disconnect between the funeral-cum-beach visit planned by Mommy and the desires and lived experiences of Grandma.
Albee also presents the American family, a concept that was heavily idealized in the 1950s, as a part of the performance to be critiqued, giving his characters only the names of archetypes or tropes. Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma are named for their familial roles, but their private interactions with each other are devoid of warmth and affection. Mommy and Daddy also undercut the stereotypical matriarch and patriarch of the nuclear family. Far from the submissive 1950s housewife, Mommy dominates her marriage, telling Daddy what to do and how to feel. Daddy brings financial security to the family, but he follows his wife passively and often whines like a child. Mommy stages the funeral as a performance ritual and casts herself as its director: She hires a musician to play, places her mother into her grave, and waits for her cue to cry. Then she weeps briefly and signals to Grandma that it is the correct moment to die. After her performance of grief, Mommy switches off her tears and declares the funeral (and mourning) over in favor of performing and projecting an image of strength. Through the meta-theatricality, Albee compares the performance of social norms and family roles to the inherent unreality of theater, suggesting that the ritual of the funeral itself is meaningless if not connected to any sincerity on the part of the mourners. In the absence of real connection, there is no difference, Albee posits, between a funeral and a day at the beach.
The Sandbox also explores the cycle of life and death, and the indignity of aging. Mommy and Daddy begin the funeral ritual for Grandma before she is dead, depositing her in her grave and taking their seats for her funeral as they wait for her to die, without even looking at her. Grandma resents her daughter, in part because Mommy’s transition into adulthood marked Grandma’s transition into old age and decline, but also because Grandma feels her efforts as a single mother have gone unappreciated. Grandma describes her life at Mommy and Daddy’s house similarly to the life of a dog, indicating the lack of emotional connection within the family and the perfunctory attitude Mommy and Daddy take toward caring for Grandma. Through aging, Grandma devolves into a non-verbal, infantilized state, then an object to be dumped on the beach. Finally, Grandma is invisible altogether to her family. Through the play, Albee gives Grandma—and by extension his own grandmother—a voice with which to express herself and her frustrations a final time. Crucially, it is only after Grandma successfully tells her story to the audience that the right time arrives for her to die. And still, Grandma attempts to regain agency over her own life by delaying her death, insisting that she isn’t ready. Albee’s view on aging is cynical, but allows for the possibility that death, in the form of the handsome Young Man, might greet the dying with the kindness and attention that their families or the circumstances of their lives might not afford them. However, because the Young Man is identified as an actor, and a poor one, Albee simultaneously considers that dignity in death is itself a performance, one which Grandma sees through yet praises anyway, choosing to believe that death is kind.
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By Edward Albee
