First produced in 1960, Edward Albee’s play The Sandbox is one of the celebrated playwright’s early one-acts and serves as a front-runner of American absurdist theater, an avant-garde artistic movement that began in Europe in the 1950s. Absurdism likens humanity to the Greek mythological figure Sisyphus, whose punishment for angering the gods was to endlessly roll a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down each time.

The term Theatre of the Absurd was coined in 1961 by theater critic Martin Esslin, who identified several playwrights who had been writing work inspired by French philosopher Albert Camus, such as Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, and Jean Genet. In his seminal essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Camus asserted that the absurd occurs when the innate human desire to search for meaning in life clashes with the inherent meaningless of an illogical world. The word “absurd” refers to actions or events that are not dictated by the rules of logic and reason. Absurdist playwrights capture this concept by defying traditional structures of theater and life; absurdist plays feature very little action or illogical action, characters are unstable, inconsistent, and alienated from another, language is insufficient for communication, the passage of time is nonsensical or unpredictable, and questions are left unanswered.

Edward Albee was the first significant American playwright to take up absurdism with his 1959 one-act The Zoo Story. While European absurdism began as a response to the devastation of World War II, American absurdism was primarily a response to the rising materialism and conspicuous consumption of the postwar economic boom, and the intrusion of commercialism in theater.

The Sandbox challenges the notion of the nuclear family, which was increasingly idealized in the 1950s in tandem with the concept of the American Dream. Albee was adopted as an infant and expressed a sense of disconnection from his wealthy parents, a theme he explored in many of his plays. However, Albee had a close relationship with his maternal grandmother, and as its subtitle suggests, The Sandbox was inspired by her death. Albee was cut off from his grandmother when he became estranged from his parents, due to his desire to become a writer, and did not learn of her death until after her funeral. The play addresses issues of ageing and dignity, the cyclical nature of life, and the inevitability of dying. In 1959, Albee also wrote The American Dream, a one-act about the illusion of the American nuclear family, featuring the characters that would later appear in The Sandbox.

Albee went on to become a celebrated playwright in the American canon, but his work was often controversial. His most famous play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962), was selected for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, but the committee decided not to give him (or anyone) the award that year because the play’s depiction of the American family was unwholesome. Albee later won Pulitzers for his plays A Delicate Balance (1967), Seascape (1975), and Three Tall Women (1994). Despite the accolades he received for his later works, Albee always contended that The Sandbox was one of his best plays.

Plot Summary

A child’s sandbox is centered on a mostly bare stage, and a backdrop shows the bright blue of the morning sky. Behind the sandbox, Young Man performs arm exercises in a bathing suit, as he will throughout the play. Whenever characters enter or reenter the stage, the Young Man greets them with childlike excitement. Mommy and Daddy enter, and Mommy declares this spot on the beach to be perfect. Mommy calls to a Musician, who comes onstage and sits, and plays intermittently throughout the scene as he is instructed by the other characters. Mommy and Daddy go off and return carrying Grandma, whom they dump in the sandbox. At first, Grandma only screeches and makes noises, but speaks when no one pays attention. As Mommy and Daddy take seats facing the audience, Grandma buries herself in the sand and explains that she got married at 17, was widowed at 30, and raised Mommy alone. Grandma shows disdain for her daughter who married a rich man and moved Grandma into their house like a dog.

Grandma talks to the Young Man, who is an actor from California. She reminds the stage crew that it ought to be dark now. The bright backdrop turns to late night. There’s a loud rumbling noise, which Mommy identifies as the signal that it’s time for Grandma to die. Mommy sobs, and Grandma exclaims that she isn’t ready. The lights and backdrop become bright daylight again and Mommy stops crying, announcing that they must move forward. Mommy and Daddy leave. Grandma tries to get up but discovers that she can’t move. The Young Man approaches Grandma and tells her that he is the Angel of Death. He recites the line like a child in a school play, but Grandma praises his performance and lays still, closing her eyes and smiling.