About the work
"The Sandbox" is a brief one-act play Edward Albee wrote in 1959 in memory of his grandmother. It premiered on April 15, 1960, at the Jazz Gallery in New York, directed by Lawrence Arrick with music by William Flanagan.
Plot
Mommy and Daddy place Grandma in a sandbox on a beach and abandon her there, while a young man silently exercises nearby. It gradually emerges that he is the Angel of Death, who gently guides Grandma out of life at the end.
Cultural significance
Running only about 15 minutes, the play is one of Albee's defining short works of early absurdist theatre and was staged in 1962 at the Cherry Lane Theatre alongside his other one-act plays in a Theatre of the Absurd series.