Summary
On a bare stage are situated 2 chairs facing the audience, a chair facing stage right with a music stand, and in the back, a sandbox with a pail and shovel in it. The stage directions read, "The background is the sky, which alters from brightest day to deepest night." Right now, it is brightest day, and the Young Man, described in the character list as "a good-looking, well-built boy in a bathing suit," is doing calisthenics onstage, which "should suggest the beating and fluttering of wings." The stage directions tell us, "The Young Man is, after all, the Angel of Death."
Mommy and Daddy are arriving at a beach. While Mommy is happy to be there, Daddy complains that it's cold. Mommy is, according to the stage directions, a "well-dressed, imposing woman" of 55, while Daddy is a "small man; gray, thin," of 60. Mommy points out the Young Man and waves to him. The Young Man waves back with "an endearing smile." Daddy and Mommy are arguing about something that remains unclear to the audience when Daddy reminds Mommy that Grandma is her mother, not his.
At this, Mommy calls to the Musician, who comes onstage and takes a seat at the music stand. When Mommy and Daddy go to get Grandma, the Musician plays and nods to the young man. Then, Mommy and Daddy come back in carrying Grandma, "a tiny, wizened woman with bright eyes," age 86. The "expression on her ancient face is that of puzzlement and fear."
Mommy and Daddy decide to put Grandma in the sandbox, and Grandma gets into a sitting position, crying out. Mommy tells the Musician to stop playing and tells Daddy that they can go sit down now. When she says hello to the Young Man again, he says "Hi!" in the same happy-go-lucky way he did before.
When Grandma cries out, Daddy asks Mommy if she thinks Grandma is comfortable, to which she replies, "How would I know?" Daddy asks Mommy if she would like to talk and she sarcastically asks if he has anything new to discuss, when suddenly Grandma starts throwing shovelfuls of sand at Mommy. As Daddy turns around to look at Grandma, Grandma screams, "GRAAAAAA!"
Mommy tells the Musician to play again, and Mommy and Daddy stare out beyond the audience. Grandma throws down the shovel and monologues about how her daughter and son-in-law treat her so terribly. She tells the audience that she was married when she was 17 to a farmer who died when she was 30. Then she asks the musician to stop playing, and he does. "There's no respect around here!" she complains.
The Young Man says "Hi!" again in his usual way. Grandma looks at him, surprised, doing a "mild double-take" before continuing to speak to the audience: "I had to raise that big cow over there all by my lonesome." She addresses the Young Man, as he flexes his muscles. He tells her he's from Southern California, to which she says, "Figgers; figgers." When she asks his name, he doesn't know, telling her "they haven't given me one yet...the studio..." He's an actor.
Analysis
The play sets up a highly allegorical and theatrical playing space from the beginning. While there are indicators of a normal realistic scene (a sandbox, a backdrop that suggests the bright daytime), the stage is, first and foremost, a stage. The action takes place in an abstracted reality, one which has the markers of the real, but which exists in a kind of liminal dream-space of meaning.
The anti-realism of the play is further solidified by the archetypal nature of the characters. We are introduced to a "Young Man," a "Mommy" and a "Daddy" and a "Grandma" rather quickly. While they are highly specific in many ways, they are also archetypes, representing a kind of universal or perhaps psychoanalytical representation of their family roles. The "Mommy" and "Daddy" and "Grandma," for instance, by virtue of not being given names or more specific identifiers, stand in for all mothers, fathers, and grandmothers.
The "Young Man" is a rather more unusual archetype, in that he is a handsome and well-built young man in a bathing suit—seemingly representing some kind of desirable image of youth—yet Edward Albee, the playwright, describes him in the stage directions as "after all, the Angel of Death." This stage direction is curious not only because Albee ascribes a morbid job description to a seemingly youthful character, but also because his "after all" suggests that we are all already in agreement about this characterization. The stage direction has a sinister quality, further suggesting that while the players and settings of the play may seem familiar—images of the American family—they are not actually what they appear to be.
The Grandma is yet another unusual character in the play. An old, wizened woman, according to the character descriptions, she has a lot to say, but she is mistreated and not listened to in her family. Her daughter treats her as though she is a burden or an object, and in response, she screams at them like a child or an animal. Then, however, when she opens her mouth to speak to the audience, she is lucid and knowledgable. The theater space thus becomes a forum in which this forgotten and mistreated character is given a voice and autonomy.
Since Albee suggests that the Young Man—a nameless handsome actor from Southern California—is the Angel of Death, the image of the old and abused woman sitting in a sandbox with him implies that perhaps this is the scene of her imminent death. Albee subverts the traditional allegorical representations of death; this is not an old person being haunted by an intimidating reaper, but a bright-eyed older woman relishing the sight of a hunky young man. The encounter between the elder and her death is an erotic encounter in the theatrical world of The Sandbox, a curious acquaintanceship rather than a portentous moral crossroads. Grandma acts as a kind of stand-up comic, doing double takes at the man, admiring his muscles, and conspiring with the audience about her dim-witted but beautiful counterpart.
