Edward Albee's Three Tall Women is a remarkable play about an unlikable woman near the end of her long life. By means of its clever structure it dissects her life and character very thoroughly. This woman, identified only as A by the author, is completely unsympathetic but eventually, as understanding grows, she becomes, if not likable, at least comprehensible as a full human being rather than the caricature she at first appears to be. In the first act three characters, simply called A, B, and C hold a long conversation in a richly appointed bedroom. A is 92 years old, terribly fragile, and drifts from lucidity to brief moments of confusion, or indifference, as to her whereabouts. B is a 52-year-old woman who is A's care giver and C is 26, a young lawyer who has been sent by her firm to tend to details of A's estate. In the second act the three very different personalities disappear. A is in a coma (a dummy figure occupies her bed) and the three women now represent A at three different stages of her life. A fourth character, the silent "Young Man," enters later and visits the comatose and, later, dead woman on the bed. The three have a conversation about what is to come for some of them and what once was for others. In the course of the conversation A's character is thoroughly laid out and, though she seems to acquire little in the way of self-knowledge, the audience grasps the root of her being and senses the variety of explanations that account for how this woman came to be the person she was at the end of a very long life.
Throughout the play, A's height is invoked as a symbol of her strength of purpose and power; and, in the case of her "penguin" husband, as its actual source. As a woman who was determined to advance in social class and wealth, however, she faced numerous limitations based on gender and class--most of which she overcame. But her gravest error was to confound her determination with genuine strength ...