meaning.

His unconventional style won him great acclaim but also led to a nearly 20-year drought of critical and commercial recognition before his 1994 play, “Three Tall Women,” garnered his third Pulitzer Prize. His other Pulitzers were for “A Delicate Balance” (1967) and “Seascape” (1975).

Many of his productions in the years after “Seascape” were savaged by the press as inconsequential trickery, a shadow of his former works. But after “Three Tall Women,” a play he called an “exorcising of demons,” he had several major productions, including “The Play About the Baby” and “The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?” —which won him his second Tony for best play in 2002.

Many of his works had things in common: domestic rancor inflamed by booze, a sense of unknown anxiety, a lost childwho creates marital friction and precise but flailing language that alternates between comic and profound.

In interviews, Mr. Albee recoiled at the idea of drawing parallels between his works or between his cynical outlook and his unhappy childhood.

“Each play of mine has a distinctive story to tell,” he told The Santa Fe New Mexican in 2001. “What unites them all is that I’m trying to make people more aware of whether they’re living their lives fully or not.”

Mr. Albee was born in 1928 and was adopted by a wealthy suburban New York couple. His father, Reed Albee, ran the Keith-Albee chain of vaudeville theaters; his mother, Frances Albee, was a socialite and a commanding presence who kept a hold on him for much of his life.

Estranged from his parents,