Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf

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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), a play by Edward Albee. [Billy Rose Theatre, 664 perf.; Tony, NYDCC Awards.] Martha ( Uta Hagen) is a frustrated, foul‐mouthed woman married to a quiet college professor, George ( Arthur Hill). She has long held it against him that he has not been a success like her father, who is president of the college. Late one night they invite a young couple new to the college, Nick ( George Grizzard) and Honey ( Melinda Dillon), to stop by for a drink. Under the influence of alcohol and under the guise of “fun and games” the small gathering explodes into a session of jokes, reminiscences, seduction, and sadomasochism. By the time the younger couple is ready to leave, George has publicly destroyed Martha's most cherished illusion—that the childless couple has a son. Alan Schneider directed the outstanding cast, demonstrating how fireworks can come from such a small, powerful production. Although somewhat baffled by the meaning of the long play, Henry Hewes praised the work as “an inexorable emotional contest between two recognizably real and thoroughly intelligent human beings.” It was Albee's first full‐length work and, in the opinion of many, still his finest play. Revivals regionally have been frequent, and it reappeared on Broadway in 1976 with Ben Gazzara and Colleen Dewhurst as George and Martha.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, play by Edward Albee, produced in 1962.

Martha, the middle‐aged daughter of the president of a small New England college, and her husband George, an unsuccessful professor in its History Department, entertain a new faculty member, Nick, and his wife Honey in an evening of drunken antagonism, much of it devoted to Martha's game “Humiliate the Host.” George and Martha's elliptical references to their 21‐year‐old son and other revelations lead Nick to confide that he married Honey only because she said she was pregnant. As the evening goes on, Honey gets sick, George wanders off, and Nick tries to sleep with Martha but is impotent. Through all the wild affairs it becomes clear that the older couple invented the story that they have a child and the younger couple's marriage is also sterile because Honey fears childbirth. The entire night is an intense exposure of sadism and masochism, aggression and fearfulness, expressed in an orgy of emotions.