All human life is here

'I was a terrible novelist and a terrible poet. WH Auden thought I should write pornography; Thornton Wilder actually thought that I should write plays. I think he was trying to save me from poetry.'

Edward Albee, most famous for penning 1962's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, won't deny he has a grand history of dividing opinion. His 1958 theatre debut, The Zoo Story, was condemned as 'filth' by Prescott Bush (George Dubya's grandfather).

He has since amassed 29 plays to his name, numerous controversies and accolades that include a 2005 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. Now a sharp 79 years old, he's stoical about criticism and wryly diffident about praise: 'Every time you open a play,' he admits, 'your career could be over.'

Albee does like taking chances; his latest opening, The Lady From Dubuque, is something of a buried treasure. The play, an absurdist tale of social mores and mortality, first opened in New York in 1980 and shut after just 12 days of critical panning. He shrugs at the memory: 'It was competing against two other plays about death - and they were rather more cheerful.'

Not that his effort went forgotten - British director Anthony Page was so thrilled by watching it that he wrote Albee a fan letter. When the pair eventually collaborated a decade later, they yielded some of Albee's biggest successes, including new works Three Tall Women and The Goat (or Who Is Sylvia?) and West End revivals of A Delicate Balance and Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?

With Page's persistence, and Maggie Smith in the title role, The Lady From Dubuque is finally coming to London. 'Why did I pursue this play for years? Because it's an exceptional mixture of high comedy and Greek tragedy,' says Page. 'The audience is involved in something very primal - and everyone is thinking: "What if this happens to me?"'

That same question seems to have been Albee's starting point. 'I wrote The Lady From Dubuque shortly after reading Elisabeth K¸bler-Ross's study on the five stages of grief,' he explains, calmly reeling off this list: 'Denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance. I was fascinated that even before I'd gone through grieving for someone, I got it right in the play. A close companion of mine died of cancer two years ago.'

He is referring to his long-time partner, the sculptor Jonathan Thomas, although he quietly adds that he's lost several close friends recently. 'I always had friends who were older than me; that gets more difficult.'

The Lady From Dubuque is a beautifully unmawkish play about dying - but it also concerns identity, communication and how reality is determined by human needs.

Such themes have qualified Albee as an exponent of the European-dominated theatre of the absurd, alongside Beckett, Ionesco and Pirandello, and the play's scenario initially seems familiar: a house party hosted by Jo and her husband Sam betrays dark undertones, especially when we learn that she is terminally ill.