Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Encyclopedia - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee that opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater on October 13, 1962. The original cast featured Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider. Subsequent cast members included Henderson Forsythe, Eileen Fulton, Mercedes McCambridge and Arthur Hill.

Starting in 2004, and continuing into 2005, there is a new production of this play on Broadway. The new production is directed by Anthony Page and it stars Kathleen Turner as Martha and Bill Irwin as George. Irwin won the 2005 Tony award for best actor for his role in Anthony Page's production.

In the play, Martha and George, a bitter erudite couple, invite a new professor and his wife to their house after a party and then continue drinking and engage in relentless, scathing verbal and sometimes physical abuse in front of them. Martha is the daughter of the president of the university where George works as a history professor; Nick is the biology professor who Martha insists teaches math, and Honey is his mousy, brandy-abusing wife.

Nick and his wife are fascinated and embarrassed, and stay even though the abuse turns periodically towards them as well.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Plot summary

Throughout the play, there are lots of darker veins running through the dialogue, with recurring themes suggesting the border between created fiction and reality is continually challenged.

The play involves the two couples playing "games," which are not exactly games in the conventional sense but are, in a sense, savage verbal acts against one or two of the others at the party. These games are referred to with sarcastically alliterative names, "Humiliate the Host," "Get the Guests," and so on.

Martha, in the first act, "Fun and Games," taunts George in stressing his failures, in an almost brutal fashion, even after George exhibits violence:

In Walpurgisnacht, the next act, Nick and George are alone, talking. Nick talks about his wife Honey and her hysterical pregnancy - and:

Later, George tells a story about a boy who shot his mother (by accident), who was driving in the countryside, who "swerved the car, to avoid a porcupine, and drove straight into a large tree...when they told him that his father was dead...he was put in an asylum" This theme is important, as it recurs later in the play.

Martha begins to describe a novel that George wrote recently: "a novel about a naughty boychild...who killed his mother and his father dead." Martha continues: "Georgie said...but Sir, it isn't a novel at all...this really happened...TO ME!". George and Martha physically fight: George grabs Martha by the throat. But Nick is the only one who has a spark of realization to the matter. Albee only suggests

Is the "boy who shot his mother" in fact George and he was lying to Nick about the asylum, is the asylum something metaphoric, or is Martha lying about the book, or is something else afoot? The immediate truth is not in fact clearly evident. This brutal event consists of the game "Humiliate the Host."

George is quick off the mark in an indirect retort, however (the next game, "Get the Guests"). While Nick and George were talking, Nick described the story about how they ended up in New Carthage and their marriage. Honey, thoroughly drunk, does not realize that George's story about the "Mousie's father" and Honey, who "tooted brandy immodestly and spent half of her time in the upchuck", with her hysterical pregnancy is in fact about her. She feels as she is about to be sick and runs to the bathroom.

At the end of this act, Martha starts to seduce Nick blatantly in front of George. George however, sits calmly, quietly, even reading a book:

At the end of the act, Honey comes out, hearing Martha and Nick brush against the doorchimes, wondering who rang. This gives George an idea, and leads into the next, crucial act of the play.

In the third act, Martha comes out with no one on stage, speaking in soliloquy. Nick joins her after a while, recalling Honey in the bathroom winking at him. The doorbell rings: It is George, with a bunch of snapdragons in his hand, calling out "Flores par los muertes" (flowers for the dead, in a reference to A Streetcar Named Desire). Martha and George argue about whether the moon is up or down: George insists it is up while Martha says she saw no moon from the bedroom. George then continues to say how he was in the Mediterranean when the moon went down and came up again: Nick asks whether it was after George killed his parents:

George calls Nick to bring back his wife for the final game, "bringing up baby". George and Martha supposedly have a son, which George has instructed Martha to keep quiet about to which she failed. George starts to talk about this son, how "Martha...climbing all over the poor bastard, trying to break the bathroom door down to wash him in the tub when he's sixteen," then George prompting Martha for her "recitation", in which they describe their son's upbringing in an almost duet-like fashion:

As this progresses, George begins to recite sections of the Dies Irae (part of the Requiem, the Latin mass for the dead), and in the end:

But - if their son was real, what has George supposed to have done? The circumstances of their son's death was touched on before, though in a different context. "Truth and illusion...Who knows the difference?"

George and Martha in fact have created their son; he does not exist as George and Martha could not have children. George says that he "killed" their son because Martha broke their rule that she could not speak of their son to others - but George also says that "it was...time". The play ends on a slightly less dark note, with George singing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" to Martha, whereupon she replies, "I am, George... I am".

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Film

A film adaptation of the play was directed by Mike Nichols and starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. It was released in 1966. The film version differs slightly from the play. The play features only the four characters listed above while in the film there are two other minor characters, the host of a roadhouse who appears briefly and says a few lines, and his wife, who serves a tray of drinks and leaves silently. (They were played by the gaffer on the film, Frank Flanagan, and his wife.) In the play, each scene takes place in Martha and George's house, while in the film, a few scenes take place at the roadhouse and outside George and Martha's house, as well as in their car. Despite these minor variatons, however, the film is extremely faithful to the play. The filmmakers used the original play as the screenplay and, aside from toning down some of the profanity a slight bit -- Martha's "screw you!" becomes "damn you!" -- virtually all of the original dialogue remains intact.

Each of the four main actors was nominated for an Oscar (the first instance where the actors of a movie were nominated for all the acting honors) but only Taylor and Sandy Dennis (playing the mousy wife) won for Best Actress and Supporting Actress, respectively. The film also won for Black and White Cinematography for Haskell Wexler's stark, black and white camera work, and is consistently on the top 250 films list at the Internet Movie Database. According to Edward Albee, he had been told that Bette Davis and James Mason were going to play "Martha" and "George", and was surprised by the Burton/Taylor casting, but stated that Taylor was quite good, and Burton was incredible.

The film is considered groundbreaking for having a level of profanity and sexual implication unheard of at that time. At the time, Jack Valenti, who had just taken over as president of the MPAA in 1966, had just thrown out the old Breen Office Code. In order for the film to be released with the MPAA approval, the releasing studio Warner Brothers agreed to minor deletions of certain profanities and to have a special warning placed on all advertisement indicating adult content in the film. It was this film and another groundbreaking film, Blowup, that led Jack Valenti to begin work on the MPAA film rating system that went into effect in 1968.

The choice of Taylor – at the time regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world – to play the frumpy, fifty-ish Martha surprised many, but the actress gained thirty pounds for the role, and her performance (along with the those of Burton, Siegel and Dennis) was ultimately praised.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Trivia

• There is a strong belief that the main characters' names are based on the first names of U.S. President George Washington and his wife Martha.
• Because of the dark, unflattering glimpse of heterosexual married life, many critics at the time suggested the play was a thinly veiled portrait of two gay male couples. Albee (who himself is openly gay) has adamantly denied this, stating to a number of interviewers over the years, "If I'd wanted to write a play about two gay couples, I would have done so."
• Albee was not initially pleased with the choices of Taylor and Burton in the lead roles. His stated preference was for Bette Davis and James Mason. However, he subsequently praised Taylor and Burton, once the film was completed.
• Nick is never addressed or introduced by name. (Viewers would not know the character's name, were it not cited in the credits.) He is, however the recipient of a number of derogatory and/or unflattering nicknames from George (e.g. "stud", "houseboy", "blondie").
• The movie version was spoofed on The Benny Hill Show with Hill playing both Burton's and Taylor's parts.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki