The Sandbox

The Young Man is the first character to appear onstage. He is the picture of youth: fit, muscular, and handsome in his bathing suit, performing constant exercises throughout the play. And although he is 25 years old, his mannerisms are sometimes childlike, such as his excited smile and wave when he says “Hi!” to the other characters (39). The Young Man is a stranger to the family, seemingly a random figure on the same beach during the funeral. But in the first stage directions, he is identified as the Angel of Death. His exercises are preparations for his one-line performance at the end of the play, when he reveals his true identity to Grandma, and also indicate that death never rests. He is an actor from southern California who has been hired by some unknown entity to play this role, but his identity as a person is blank and he has no name. Therefore, he fulfills whatever role the characters need him to play in the moment. The names Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma suggest that Mommy and Daddy have a child who isn’t present, reminiscent of young Edward Albee who wasn’t invited to his own grandmother’s funeral. The Young Man stands in for the missing child, and by extension Albee, receiving grandmotherly affection and encouragement from Grandma, and offering her attention and respect in exchange. Albee’s feelings about his own adoption, explored in his play The American Dream (1959) which features the same characters as The Sandbox, suggest that the role of the young actor comments on a feeling of interchangeability or an ability to be replaced within the family. The character’s youth makes him the only member of the family who has yet to reach the peak of physical fitness and the decline toward aging and death. Therefore, as a representative of youth, he is also a representative of death for those nearing the end of their lives who must die to allow the cycle to continue.

Albee’s portrayal of the mother figure is cold and unforgiving. Mommy is 55, suggesting that she has reached the stage when any children who would have called her Mommy are now adults. Although her identity has been replaced by the title bestowed by motherhood, Mommy undermines the wife-and-mother archetype that was perpetuated in 1950s popular media. Characters like Donna Stone (The Donna Reed Show), June Cleaver (Leave it to Beaver), and Margaret Anderson (Father Knows Best) affirmed the role of the housewife as the nurturing Angel of the House, selfless, feminine, and submissive. But Mommy is none of these things. She is dominating and abusive, identified by Grandma as having only married Daddy because he is rich – something she admits in The American Dream. Although a more contemporary feminist reading of the play might find more compassion for Mommy as a strong woman who was raised by a strong single mother and has married a man who treats her more like a mother than a spouse, Albee has certainly written her as cruel, unsympathetic, and intentionally emasculating. Albee has described his own adoptive parents as overly privileged and inattentive. Mommy’s brusqueness and adherence to ceremony in her mother’s funeral, including the structured moment in which she weeps, suggests that her grief is a performance rather than genuine, and that Mommy is concerned above all with appearances over actual feeling.

Daddy is 60 years old and Like Mommy, Daddy counters the popular trope of the husband/father as the patriarchal leader and moral center of the family. Having brought his wealth into the marriage, Daddy’s use is expended and he has been displaced by Mommy as the head of the household, his identity not only absorbed by his paternal title but crushed by his domineering wife. Daddy is emasculated, in the sense of traditional gender roles within the family, and infantilized. He does not complement Mommy’s paternal displacement by filling the vacant maternal role. Instead, Daddy has become a child. He whines about his immediate discomforts, requiring Mommy’s emotionless soothing when the darkness and loud rumbling make him afraid. Whenever Mommy asks for input, Daddy immediately shifts the agency and responsibility back to her. Mommy demonstrates that this is her preferred dynamic when she dismisses his one suggestion that they pass the time with conversation. Unlike Grandma, Albee does not allow Daddy to express any sense of dissatisfaction or frustration with his role in the family. Daddy’s regression into childlike behavior is detailed further in The American Dream.