The play started on Broadway at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre on January 26, 1975, and closed on March 22, 1975, after 65 performances.
Directed by Albee, the cast starred Deborah Kerr (Nancy), Barry Nelson (Charlie), Maureen Anderman (Sarah) and Frank Langella (Leslie).
Albee "jettisoned a large section of the play" during the out of town tryout in Baltimore, prior to the Broadway premiere.
Directed by Mark Lamos, the cast starred George Grizzard (Charlie), Frances Sternhagen (Nancy), Elizabeth Marvel (Sarah), and Frederick Weller (Leslie).
[7] The director was David J. Miller, with lights by Jeff Adelberg, costumes by Fabian Aguilar, fights & movement by Meron Langsner, and sound by Walter Eduardo.
The cast consisted of Michelle Dowd as Nancy (who won an IRNE Award for Best Actress for the role), Peter Brown as Charlie, Claude Del as Leslie, and Emma Goodman as Sarah.
In Seascape, Nancy and Charlie, an American couple on the verge of the major life change of retirement, are having problems in their relationship.
They are discussing these matters on the beach when another couple appears, two human-sized lizards named Leslie and Sarah who speak and act like people.
The lizards have evolved to such a degree that they no longer feel at home in the sea and are compelled to seek life on the land.
What the lizards experience with Nancy and Charlie nearly drives them back to the sea, but with an offer of help from the human couple, they decide to stay.
This relatively happy ending is not common in many of Albee's previous plays, and some critics find it refreshing.
Before Albee won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for Seascape, however, many critics reacted negatively to the first production.
One was Clive Barnes of The New York Times who writes, "What Mr. Albee has given us here is a play of great density, with many interesting emotional and intellectual reverberations."
The Nation's Harold Clurman places Seascape in a positive context in terms of Albee's development as a playwright.
During a pause at the end of their heated argument, Leslie, a human-sized male lizard, takes a peek at them.
To protect themselves, Nancy believes they should show submission by lying on their backs with their legs and arms up, as a dog would.
Nancy later tells him, much to his surprise, that she considered divorcing him a long time ago because she believed he was having an affair.
While Nancy does become a bit frustrated with the lizards' intellectual limitations, she becomes increasingly annoyed with Charlie's condescending attitude toward them.
While Leslie's guard remains high, especially around Charlie, for most of the play, he is also curious, much more so than his human male counterpart.
Though Leslie wants to understand for the most part, he becomes impatient when the humans cannot easily explain complex things like love or consciousness.
He also understands that Charlie is being difficult when Nancy mentions that her husband thinks they are dead and that this situation is some sort of hallucination.
Nancy tries to engage her husband, Charlie, in a mutually beneficial discussion about her needs and their future, but he derides her ideas.
Her general kindness toward them and offer of help when the lizards are deciding whether to stay on land or to go back to the sea influences their decision.
She is also emotional, and when Charlie asks her a question that is hard for her to understand (what she would do if Leslie disappeared), she becomes distraught, leading to a confrontation.
Leslie decides that he and Sarah will stay on land when Nancy and Charlie, albeit reluctantly, offer to help them.
Though Leslie and Sarah are somewhat fearful of the change, they do accept the help that Nancy, enthusiastically, and Charlie, reluctantly, give them.
I mean after all, you make your nest, and accept a whole ... array ... of things ... and ... we didn' t feel we belonged there anymore."
Though it is unstated in the text, several critics have assumed that the action takes place somewhere on the east coast of the United States.
The fantasy aspect of the play creates dramatic irony and allows issues such as progress, values, and differences to be discussed.
In earth's distant history creatures emerged from the sea to live on land, as Leslie and Sarah do in the course of the play.