Could Edward Albee have envisaged when “The American Dream” opened at the Cherry Lane Theatre in 1961 that he would be directing it at the same playhouse almost 50 years later? I doubt it but, having oscillated between dizzy theatrical highs and commercial and critical slumps, Mr. Albee’s career path has eschewed convention. Somehow, then, it seems fitting that he should celebrate his 80th birthday by directing two of his early absurdist one-act plays.

Mr. Albee wrote “The American Dream,” and its short spin-off “The Sandbox,” just prior to his most celebrated play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” As with “Who’s Afraid…,” “The American Dream” depicts an unhappily married couple’s verbal battle, their dirty laundry shamelessly paraded at home in full view of their guests.

Mr. Albee takes a dim view of the American dream, deeming it a vacuous nightmare that chains couples to a lifetime of sterile conformity. Whether or not you share his desolate take on the nuclear family is irrelevant given the masterful economy of language and depth of character on show. “The American Dream” may belong to the “Theater of the Absurd” movement, but it is absurdity at its most powerful. An hour long, it provides a richer theatrical experience, and has more to say, than most plays that run twice its length.

The couple at its center (Judith Ivey and George Bartenieff) are simply named Mommy and Daddy. Mommy prattles on about the difficulties in purchasing a beige hat to Daddy, who tamely repeats his wife’s observations back to her. Grandma, Mommy’s mother, who lives with the couple, is obsessed with storing her possessions in boxes, fearful her daughter will make good on her threat to get the “van people” to take her away.

The arrival of a neighbor, Mrs. Barker (Kathleen Butler), causes Grandma to disclose the roots of Mommy and Daddy’s unhappiness: Unable to conceive a child, they adopted a boy only to kill him when he turned out differently from what they had envisioned. The American Dream then arrives, in the form of Young Man (Harmon Walsh), and Mommy is intoxicated by the emptiness of this self-confessed nihilist who “has no talents at all except what you see” and who will “do almost anything for money.”

Mr. Albee the director orchestrates proceedings in a no-frills manner, ensuring that nothing overshadows Mr. Albee the writer. The set is sparse, though not subtle. Grandma’s boxes are wrapped in American flag paper, the armchairs are red, white, and blue, and the Young Man wears blue jeans, a red belt, and a white T-shirt.

Ms. Ivey portrays Mommy sensationally, the controlling battle-ax engaged in a doomed pursuit for satisfaction, her every word a weapon wounding her family but ultimately blunting her own happiness. Mr. Bartenieff is no less fine, playing Daddy as though he were a sleepy basset hound, periodically being woken by its irascible owner. The weak link here is Grandma. Perhaps it is because she assumed the role at the 11th hour, following the indisposition of Myra Carter, but Lois Markle is far too sedate. Tormented by her daughter’s tyranny, Grandma is devoid of the necessary bitterness, fragility, and calculation.

It is a brief role, much of it merely consisting of exhibiting brawn, but the Young Man is integral to “The American Dream” ending satisfactorily. The dual challenges confronting an actor in an Albee play — articulating every syllable with precision and coping with the emotional transitions his characters undergo — are admirably met by Mr. Walsh in his off-Broadway debut. Sources of communication have expanded since 1961, but time has hardly discredited Mr. Albee’s notion that too many of us, unable to connect effectively with family and friends, find ourselves trapped by materialism. Playwrights who put ideas before people, as Mr. Albee does here, risk overwhelming their audience with tiresome agitprop. Instead, Mr. Albee derives potent dramatic effect from such an approach, typified by the Young Man breezily confessing, “Well, I’m a type.” Albee’s 13-minute play “The Sandbox” shifts the characters of “The American Dream” out of the house and onto the beach. With a nod to the fate of the parents in Beckett’s “Endgame,” Mommy and Daddy dump Grandma in a sandbox underneath the watchful eye of the Angel of Death, clad only in a Speedo swimsuit, and a musician playing a cello (changed from a clarinet in the original production). Finding no escape from her daughter’s callousness, Ms. Markle’s helplessness is better suited to “The Sandbox” than to “The American Dream.”

Instead of perpetually ripping each other to shreds, most couples would nowadays seek sanctuary in divorce court. For the most part, though, this formidable revival, commandeered by Mr. Albee, demonstrates that neither play is out of date. An irony can, however, be found in their message that society is out to get the elderly since Mr. Albee, in his ninth decade, is not only surviving, but creatively thriving.

Open run (38 Commerce St. at Bedford Street, 212-239-6200).