Like many of our recent writers, Albee shies from sentiment. It is a decoy to slush, to weakness, to compromise. He aims at the acridly objective. If they were less so, they might not be at all acceptable to a large audience. We are permitted to evade some of the barbs and stings, the hurt of the play's content, by laughing them off.
Comedy often serves as a safety valve from pain.
The comic aspect of Albee's writing is his mask. Thus, when he cannot take recourse to the mask, Albee turns to symbolism. Though still somewhat withheld by the mask of comedy and vindictive humor, it voices his particular ache in the most genuinely compassionate tone of which he is now capable. Unless we enact rather than merely verbalize connection with our kindred, we are doomed to the bitterness, hated and utter destructiveness that is the plague in the universal atmosphere. The value to the play of this particular reference to the question of reality and illusion is doubtful.