A: A is a 92-year-old woman. She is thin, autocratic, proud, and wealthy, with "encroaching senility".
B: B is a 52-year-old version of A, to whom she is the hired caretaker. She is markedly cynical about life. Although she doesn't enjoy working for A, she learns much from her.
C: C is a 26-year-old version of B. She is a lawyer, present on behalf of A's law firm, because A has neglected paperwork, payments, and such. She has all of youth's common self-assurance.
The Boy: The son of the three women, he does not play a speaking role but is the subject of much discussion among them. A falling-out between the son and his mother is the cause of much of A and B's despair.
Overview
The protagonist, a compelling woman more than 90 years old, reflects on her life with a mixture of shame, pleasure, regret, and satisfaction. She recalls the fun of her childhood and her early marriage, when she felt an overwhelming optimism. She also bitterly recalls negative events that caused her regret: her husband’s affairs and death, and the estrangement of her gay son. The woman’s relationship with her son is the clearest indication that Albee was working through some troubled memories of his own in Three Tall Women. Raised by conservative New England adoptive parents who disapproved of his being gay, he left home at 18, as does the son in this play. Albee admitted to The Economist that the play "was a kind of exorcism. And I didn’t end up any more fond of the woman after I finished it than when I started." In a study guide to the play, it was noted that "Besides exorcising personal demons, Albee regained the respect of New York theater critics with the play. Many of them had despaired that the playwright, who showed such promise during the 1960s and 1970s, had dried up creatively. In fact, Three Tall Women was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1994, as well as the Drama Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel, and Outer Critics Circle awards for best play."
Plot summary
Act I
The play opens with the three major characters together in A's bedroom. Throughout the scene, A does most of the talking, frequently reminiscing and telling stories about her life. B humors her, while helping her do everyday things that have become difficult to do alone. C, while getting a rare word in edgewise about the duties she's there to accomplish, is most often deterred by A's slipping into long-winded storytelling. C often challenges A's contradictory and nonsensical statements; but she is discouraged by B, who is clearly used to A and her habits. Act 1 ends when A, in the middle of one of her stories, has a stroke.
Act II
The play picks up with a mannequin of A lying in a bed. A, B, and C are no longer the separate entities of Act 1, but represent A at different times in her life. Since A, B, and C in this act are all very coherent, the audience gets a much clearer insight into the woman's past. At one point, the son comes in to sit by the mannequin. A and B are not happy to see him, because of the rift between them. C is none the wiser, because she is from a period in the woman's life before her marriage. He says nothing throughout, and leaves before the end of the play. The play ends with A, B, and C debating about the happiest moment in their life. A has the last word, saying, "That's the happiest moment. When it's all done. When we stop. When we can stop."
