The Playwright and a Revival of His "Lady From Dubuque" When Edward Albee wrote "The Lady From Dubuque" in the late 1970s, at the time his most explicit play about mortality, he was coming off his second Pulitzer Prize for drama (for "Seascape") and was deep in the throes of alcoholism. He lashed out at actresses like Ingrid Bergman, who were offered the title role but questioned the work's surrealist dimensions; at the same time, as he later told his biographer, Mel Gussow, he was too drunk too often to fix problems that even he saw in the second act. Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times The writer Edward Albee at the Signature Center. From left, Catherine Curtin, Thomas Jay Ryan, Jane Alexander holding Laila Robins, C. J. Wilson and Michael Hayden in a revival of "Edward Albee's The Lady From Dubuque," directed by David Esbjornson and opening Monday at the Signature Center. The play opened on Broadway in January 1980 and was so eviscerated by critics that it closed after 12 performances. It was the beginning of what Gussow called "Albee's down period, when nothing seemed to go right." Mr. Albee is 83 now and has long since bounced back, after landing a third Pulitzer in 1994 for "Three Tall Women" and winning the 2002 best play Tony Award for "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?" Several plays of his "down period" have not fared as well, however: They are rarely produced, and have not received the reappraisals that he believes they deserve. But the right relationships bring opportunities: Signature Theater Company, Mr. Albee's theatrical home of late, is mounting the first major New York revival of the newly titled "Edward Albee's The Lady From Dubuque," which opens on Monday, starring the Tony Award winner Jane Alexander. Forever wry and infamously irascible, especially where theater critics are concerned, Mr. Albee said in an interview that he did not expect people to come away from this production embracing "Dubuque" as a favorite, not like his 1962 masterwork "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Rather, he hoped the play's unblinking look at a dying woman (and those resisting or abetting her passing) would find a measure of admiration. Perhaps enough, he added, to lead to New York revivals of his other two Broadway flops from that period: An adaptation of "Lolita" (1981), which he believes was badly served by its production, and the dark comedy "The Man Who Had Three Arms" (1983), which he thinks was dismissed out of hand by critics. "I don't necessarily want "The Lady From Dubuque" and those other plays to be liked, but I do think they are worthy of respect," said Mr. Albee, his eyes bright and voice sharp during the interview by the bookstore in Signature's new theater complex. "If you write plays because you just want them to be liked, you have to lie too much," he continued. People like theater that is safe, generally speaking - things that are easy, that are not too deeply troubling. In other words, people want to go to the theater and waste their time. His are hardly cranky-old-man observations. Mr. Albee has always been lacerating, whether in his get-the-guests parlor games of "Virginia Woolf" and "Lady From Dubuque" or his public fury when the producers of "Dubuque" quickly closed the Broadway show. He openly referred to them as "the seven dwarfs," even though some were his good friends. His sharp tongue has long reflected, in part, his own reaction to what he sensed was the stubbornness of some critics and audience members who wanted him to recycle the earlier hits that led Newsweek to put him on the cover in 1963. "After I wrote "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" I was supposed to write, "Son of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and keep on doing that. I didn't, and that annoyed them. I didn't decide to be obscure, to confuse people. I write the next play that's in my head. "You just can't second-guess yourself and you can't let anything get in the way of letting what wants to happen, happen, on its own terms," he continued. "If I started saying to myself, "Oh, this is going to be too difficult for an audience," I'd be destroying my talent." For the record, the earlier critical judgments against "Dubuque," "Lolita" and "The Man Who Had Three Arms" did not blame Mr. Albee for failing to write another "Virginia Woolf" (or, for that matter, another "Delicate Balance," which won the Pulitzer in 1967). And some of the critics noted - as they long have - that Mr. Albee was one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century, along with Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Mostly, the reviews roundly concluded that the three plays were not good and went on to worry that Mr. Albee was squandering his talent.