In Three Tall Women, Albee wrestles with these issues and poses two fascinating questions: How do we become who we are? How do character, fate and time combine to determine our destiny? To answer these questions, Albee provides us with a very personal case study. In his play, his nonagenarian, identified only as A, is a cantankerous, feisty, domineering and ambitious woman inspired by Albee's own adoptive mother. Albee uses a brilliant devise to take us through A's life and to exorcise his family demons. In Act I, he introduces A in her highly appointed bedroom where she tries to maintain her sense of control while B, her nurse and companion, and C her young lawyer try to iron out her affairs and keep her and her papers in order. 

In Act II, Albee moves far from conventional form. As in Timequake he allows A to replay her past with two incarnations of her younger selves played by actresses B and C. A plays herself with new vitality at 92. B is a resigned 52-year-old taking measure of her midlife circumstance. C is the optimistic 26-year-old looking enthusiastically toward her future. This perspective offers us a meditation on the portentous power of memory, the elusive nature of happiness, the often tragic realities of love, sex, and marriage, the distressing reality of aging and the peaceful finality of death. 

As in all of his plays, Albee's genius in Three Tall Women is best realized in his character development. Here we see A with all the details of her life laid bare. Her unhappy marriage to the one-eyed philanderer she calls the "penguin." Her alienation from her son who she throws out of her house and her life because of his homosexuality. We see her with all the substantial faults: her bigotry, vindictiveness, selfishness. But for all her monstrousness, we eventually understand her and forgive her. It seems that this is what Albee does with Three Tall Women--in the reinventing of his mother, Albee comes to a point of understanding and with understanding comes forgiveness.