Who's Afraid of Virginia WoolfEdward Albee

Context

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was first performed in New York City in 1962. The play stunned and pleased American audiences, seemed to provide a vital insight into American life. The country was coming out of the 1950s, when Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower was a conservative, well-loved president and television shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best were popular. The importance of a happy family was emphasized by both politicians and popular culture. Many Americans considered success to be measured by having one's own house, car, kids, and dog. By all shallow measures, the 1950s were a stable, productive time for the United States of America. And yet, these shallow measures and the trappings of success often hid real problems, which will eventually crop up in any human community. It is this raw, human truth beneath the phony exterior that Edward Albee attempts to reveal in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

Edward Albee grew up in a family deeply invested in projecting the perfect image of itself into social situations. Born in Washington D.C. on March 12, 1928, Albee was adopted by a wealthy family from Larchmont, New York. This affluent suburb of New York City was home to a rich, competitive social scene, of which his mother, in particular, was very much a part. Through his youth, Albee resisted interacting with this culture, finding it hollow and unsatisfactory. At age twenty, after years of expensive schooling at prestigious institutions, Albee moved to New York City's Greenwich Village to join the avant-garde art scene. His first play, The Zoo Story, was performed in 1959, met with fine success, and launched his career. After that, Albee earned much praise for most of his work, the most famous of which are Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Delicate Balance, and Three Tall Women.

Summary

The play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is set on the campus of a small, New England university. It opens with the main characters, George and Martha coming home from a party at her father's house. The two of them clearly care deeply for each other, but events have turned their marriage into a nasty battle between two disenchanted, cynical enemies. Even though the pair arrives home at two o'clock in the morning, they are expecting guests: the new math professor and his wife.

Of course, as it turns out, this new, young professor, Nick, actually works in the biology department. He and his wife, Honey, walk into a brutal social situation. In the first act, "Fun and Games," Martha and George try to fight and humiliate each other in new, inventive ways. As they peel away each other's pretenses and self-respect, George and Martha use Honey and Nick as pawns, transforming their guests into an audience to witness humiliation, into levers for creating jealousy, and into a means for expressing their own sides of their mutual story. In the second act, "Walpurgisnacht," these games get even nastier. The evening turns into a nightmare. George and Martha even attack Honey and Nick, attempting to force them to reveal their dirty secrets and true selves. Finally, in the last act, "The Exorcism," everyone's secrets have been revealed and purged. Honey and Nick go home, leaving Martha and George to try to rebuild their shattered marriage.

Characters

George - A 46-year-old member of the history department at New Carthage University. George is married to Martha, in a once loving relationship now defined by sarcasm and frequent acrimony. Martha - Martha is the 52-year-old daughter of the president of New Carthage University. She is married to George, though disappointed with his aborted academic career. She attempts to have an affair with Nick. Nick - Nick has just become a new member of the biology faculty at New Carthage University. He is 28 years old, good-looking, Midwestern, and clean-cut. He is married to Honey. Honey - Honey is the petite, bland wife of Nick. She is 26 years old, has a weak stomach, and is not the brightest bulb of the bunch.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Overview

In the play, George and Martha invite a new professor and his wife to their house after a party. Martha is the daughter of the president of the college (believed to be based on Trinity College, Connecticut) where George is an associate professor of history. Nick (who is never addressed or introduced by name) is a biology professor (who Martha thinks teaches math), and his mousy, brandy-abusing wife (also never named, but called "Honey" by Nick throughout the play). Once at home, Martha and George continue drinking and engage in relentless, scathing verbal and sometimes physical abuse in front of Nick and Honey. The younger couple are simultaneously fascinated and embarrassed. They stay even though the abuse turns periodically towards them as well.

The play's title, which alludes to the English novelist Virginia Woolf, is also a reference to the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" from Walt Disney's animated version of The Three Little Pigs. Because obtaining the rights to use the music would have been expensive, most stage versions, and the film, have Martha sing to the tune of "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush". This melody fits the meter fairly well and is in the public domain. In the first few moments of the play, it is revealed that someone sang the song earlier in the evening at a party, although who first sang it (Martha or some other anonymous party guest) remains unclear. Martha repeatedly needles George over whether he found it funny.

I was in there having a beer one night, and I saw "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" scrawled in soap, I suppose, on this mirror. When I started to write the play it cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf . . . who's afraid of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather typical, university intellectual joke.— Edward Albee[4]

In interviews, Albee has said that he asked Woolf's widower Leonard Woolf for permission to use her name in the title of the play. In another interview, Albee acknowledged that he based the characters of Martha and George on his good friends, New York socialites Willard Maas

and Marie Menken. They share the names of President George Washington and his wife Martha Washington, America's first First Couple. Maas was a professor of literature at Wagner College (one similarity between the character George and Willard) and his wife Marie was an experimental filmmaker and painter. Maas and Menken were known for their infamous salons, where drinking would "commence at 4pm on Friday and end in the wee hours of night on Monday" (according to Gerard Malanga, Warhol associate and friend to Maas). The primary conflict between George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? derived from Maas and Menken's tempestuous and volatile relationship. Many darker veins running through the play's dialogue suggest that the border between fiction and reality is continually challenged. The play ends with Martha answering the titular question of who is afraid to live their life free of illusions with, "I am, George, I am." Implicitly, exposure is something everyone fears: façade (be it social or psychological), although damaging, provides a comfort.

Plot summary

The play involves the two couples playing "games," which are savage verbal attacks 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", "Hump the Hostess", and "Bringing Up Baby".[edit]Act One — "Fun and Games"

George and Martha return from a faculty party, but Martha soon informs George that she has invited over guests. These guests, Nick and his wife, Honey, are much younger than George and Martha. During the "after-party" Martha taunts George. She stresses his failures brutally and drives him out of the room. Martha then tells an embarrassing story about how she humiliated him with a sucker punch in front of her father. During the telling George appears with a gun; he fires it and an umbrella pops out. Even after this joke, Martha's taunts continue. Nick and Honey grow uneasy; George reacts violently. Honey runs to the bathroom to vomit.[edit]Act Two — "Walpurgisnacht"

Nick and George are then alone. Nick talks about his wife and her hysterical pregnancy. George proceeds to tell Nick a story about visiting a gin mill with a boarding school classmate. This friend had killed his mother accidentally by shooting her. He was laughed at for ordering "bergin," killed his father while driving, and was committed to an asylum shortly thereafter where he never spoke again. George and Nick argue. Eventually, George calls Nick a "smug son of a bitch." Once the wives rejoin the men, Martha begins to describe (in the face of a persistent protest from George) her husband's only novel, buried by her powerful and controlling father, a work which turns out to be embarrassingly autobiographical. The culmination of George's violent reaction to Martha's refusal to stop telling this story is to grab Martha by the throat and nearly strangle her. In his stage direction, Albee suggests that Nick may be making a connection between the "novel" and the story George had told him earlier.

George is quick to retort Martha's prior actions, in the next game, which he calls "Get the Guests." George tells an extemporaneous tale of "the Mousie" who "tooted brandy immodestly and spent half of her time in the upchuck," and Nick's thoroughly drunk wife

realizes that the story is about her and her hysterical pregnancy. She feels as if she is about to be sick and runs to the bathroom again.

At the end of this scene, Martha starts to seduce Nick in George's presence. George reacts calmly, simply sitting and reading a book. As Martha and Nick walk upstairs, George throws his book against the door chimes in anguish; In all productions until 2005, Honey returns, wondering who rang the doorbell and George comes up with an idea to get Martha, he plans on telling Martha that their son has died. And the act ends as George tells an invisible Martha that their son has died.

In what is labeled the "Definitive Edition" of the script, the second act ends before Honey arrives.[5][edit]Act Three — "The Exorcism"

Martha appears alone in the living room, shouting at the others to come out from hiding. 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 para los muertos" (flowers for the dead). 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. This leads to a discussion where Martha and George insult Nick in tandem, an argument that reveals that Nick was too drunk to have sex with Martha upstairs anyway.

George asks Nick to bring his wife back out for the final game "Bringing Up Baby." George and Martha have a son, about whom George has repeatedly told Martha to keep quiet over the course of the night, but now George talks about Martha's overbearingness toward their son. George then prompts Martha for her "recitation", in which they describe their son's upbringing in a bizarre duet. Martha describes their son's beauty and talents and then accuses George of ruining his life. As this tale progresses, George begins to recite sections of the Libera me (part of the Requiem, the Latin mass for the dead).

At the end of the tale, George informs Martha that the door chimes heard earlier was a boy from Western Union who brought a telegram that said their son had died: "killed late in the afternoon ... on a country road, with his learner's permit in his pocket, he swerved, to avoid a porcupine"—a description that matches that of the boy in the gin mill story told earlier. Martha screams "You can't do that!" and collapses.

It becomes clear that George and Martha never had a son and George has decided to "kill" him. Martha broke their rule that she could not speak of their son to others. Nick and Honey leave, realizing the cause of their shameless antics was their inability to conceive. The play ends with George singing, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" to Martha, whereupon she replies, "I am, George... I am."

The play itself is performed in three acts, and is a little under three hours long: 1 hour, 1 hour, 40 minutes, with two 10-minute intermissions.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: A Feminist Response to the 50th Anniversary

"That wasn't a very nice thing to say, Martha."

Few lines are as understated and accurate as this one, delivered early in the Broadway revival of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Directed by Pam MacKinnon, this exhaustingly brilliant production from the Steppenwolf Theater is now in performances at the Booth Theater on Broadway and defiantly proving that some works of drama are, in fact, timeless.

Returning to Broadway 50 years after its original production, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is one of Albee's most well-known and, it feels odd to say, beloved plays. Set in the living room of history professor George and his wife Martha Washington's home, following a faculty party, the play follows the Washingtons and a younger couple, new to the college campus, as they while away the wee hours of the morning with alcohol and games.

But these are not fun or innocent games; they are vicious games meant to attack and undermine each other. Married for more than 20 years, George and Martha are firmly established in a pattern of codependent emotional cruelty, fighting each other at every turn. They are joined by the presumably mild-mannered younger couple, Nick and Honey, but as the drinks flow and the night progresses, all niceties are lost and the truth about both of these couples is exposed.

The master of the ceremonies of this night of horror is George, played by Tracy Letts in a masterful Broadway debut. A Tony Award-winning playwright for August: Osage County, Letts gives an understated performance of fluid brilliance. It is almost impossible to look away from him onstage. With mussed hair and both his hands shoved into the pockets of his cardigan sweater, at first glance Letts appears to be a man beaten down by years of disappointment and bullying by his wife. For Martha does bully him. Constantly reminding him about his lack of academic and professional as well as personal achievements, she belittles and ridicules him in front of their guests repeatedly. But George does not take it lying down; he returns them with just as much zest and vigor as her. The two exchange acerbic back and forth in a rapid fire, seemingly never-ending battle of cruelty. One can only imagine how other nights in their living room have passed.

As Martha, Amy Morton gives a subtly nuanced performance that is both brittle and vulnerable. It is easy for Martha to overshadow George in this play but Morton's Martha is more quiet (although not actually quiet) and textured; one can witness the disappointment that motivates her anger. There is a quiet resignation that hovers at the edges of her jabs and barbs and even as the cruelty of her actions increases, so does the sadness. When she attempts to explain the reasons behind her actions to the uncomprehending Nick, quietly describing how she is unable to accept George's love and continues to hurt him rather than reciprocating his feelings, she depicts vulnerability and inspired sympathy - no small feat after a night of shouting and gin swilling.

Joining George and Martha are Nick and Honey (Madison Dirks and Carrie Coon), a young biology professor and his wife. They are not a perfect couple; despite their wholesome good looks, dark secrets lurk beneath their tasteful twill outfits. Both Dirks and Coon are excellent, with Dirks giving a restrained performance of masculine rage and Coons exhibiting outstanding comedic timing as Honey sinks deeper and deeper into a haze of brandy and

unhappiness. However, I am happy to report that none of the actors resort to cheap drunken theatrics; even when Honey is clearly intoxicated, Coons still gives a performance that depicts depth and pain.

The pain of both Honey and Martha is visible, especially in the context of the play, which was first seen on Broadway 50 years ago. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was submitted for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama but the award's advisory board objected to Albee's script's use of profanity and sexual themes. The board overruled the award's advisory committee and no Pulitzer Prize for Drama was awarded in 1963. (One heard more scandalous comments being made in the theater's lobby, both before and after this recent performance.)

When viewing both Martha and Honey, one must consider how the roles of women has changed a great deal since 1962, and in a life after The Feminine Mystique, the depression of a housewife is understandable and sympathetic. The audience laughed when George said disparagingly of Martha, "She's a housewife. She buys things," but I felt sorry for her as a disenfranchised woman who clearly is not satisfied with what her daily life offers her. And Honey, who clearly struggles to play the role of the proper professor's wife, is unfulfilled and blames herself for her unhappiness when her husband is also contributing to their marriage's struggles.

The internal chaos of George and Martha's life together is represented in scenic designer Todd Rosenthal's set, which is cluttered and overflowing with books, haphazardly piled all across the stage, and costume designer Nan Cibula-Jenkins' outfits aptly reflect the personalities of the characters. Allen Lee Hughes' lighting is surprisingly bright, illuminating the truth about these people as the night wears on and they become more and more honest. But what is illuminated the most clearly is the fact that, despite first appearances, thanks to the incredible performances by Letts and Morton, George and Martha are each other's equals, both in love and in war. Both loathing and longing for each other, the two continue to battle until all punches are pulled, all secrets exposed and this exhausting and invigorating production's curtain has fallen.