SparkNotes: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Summary Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee Context Characters 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. More Help Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: What’s It All About? – The Virginia Woolf Blog No Comments on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: What’s It All About? Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is a 1962 Broadway play about the troubled marriage of a middle-aged couple named Martha and George. The play critiques the idea of the perfect American family and challenges social expectations about life, love and family. Who Wrote “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”: The play was written by American playwright and Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Albee, whose other plays include the Zoo Story, a Delicate Balance, Seascape and the Sandbox.

Albee’s plays are considered critiques on modern society and often highlight the growing pains and disillusionment of the 1960s. Since the play first premiered in 1962, the title has confused many and made people wonder if the play was actually about Virginia Woolf. Author Caroline Zoob, who wrote a book titled Virginia Woolf’s Garden about her years as a caretaker at Virginia Woolf’s country home, Monk’s House, stated that one of the most frequent questions she overheard visitors ask when touring the house was: “So why were people so afraid of her then?” Virginia Woolf Although the title does reference Virginia Woolf, the play is not about her at all. Yet, there are still a number of connections between the two. The title itself is a play on words that Albee saw scrawled on a mirror in a Greenwich Village bar one night in 1954, according to an interview with Albee in the Paris Review: “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.” The original title of the play was Exorcism and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was just a line in the play. Albee later adopted it as the subtitle of the play and then some time after that decided to make it the main title. Martha sings the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” in the play and in the 1966 film but in live stage productions the song is usually changed to “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush” due to licensing restrictions. Similarity to Lappin and Lapinova: Around 1962, Albee wrote to Leonard Woolf and asked if it would be okay to use Virginia’s name in the title. Leonard gave his permission and when the play came to London, he went to see it with his friend Peggy Ashcroft. He later wrote to Albee, praising the play and suggesting a possible connection between it and a similar story Virginia once wrote: ‘We both enjoyed it immensely.

It is so amusing and at the same time moving and is really about the important things in life. Nothing is rarer, at any rate, on the English stage. I wonder if you have ever read a short story which my wife wrote and is printed in A Haunted House? It is called ‘Lappin and Lapinova.’ The details are quite different but the theme is the same as that of the imaginary child in your play.” Albee never claimed to have read the short story but the plot is somewhat similar. In Lappin and Lapinova , a married couple having trouble coping with a dreary childless marriage invent a secret fantasy world where both the husband and wife are rabbits.

Virginia and Leonard never had children themselves, upon the advice of Virginia’s doctors who said her mind was too fragile to cope with motherhood, and it was the Woolf’s marriage , or perhaps marriage in general, that may have inspired the short story, according to the book “Outsiders Together: Virginia and Leonard Woolf”: “Susan Dick posits that ‘Lappin and Lapinova’ is the work alluded to when Woolf wrote to Vanessa Bell on October 24, 1938 that ‘marriage, as I suddenly for the first time realised walking in the Square, reduces one to damnable servility. Cant be helped. Im going to write a comedy about it.’ The story is about a young wife, Rosalind Thorburn, who attempts to mitigate the dreariness of her marriage by engaging her husband in an elaborate narrative about two rabbits.

Rosalind’s Shakespearean name name links her to Orlando; but ‘Lappin and Lapinova’ is, in fact, a kind of reverse Orlando, in which the marriage of two utterly dissimilar people depends entirely on the painstaking creation of a ‘little language’ that inevitable collapses.” Like the two main characters, Leonard and Virginia also had animal nicknames for each other. Virginia’s nickname was “Mandril” and Leonard’s was “Mongoose,” which they would use in letters to each other, such as in a letter Leonard once wrote to Virginia where he stated: “I hope the Mandril went to its box early and isn’t worried by anything in the world.” Although Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf doesn’t involve animals, the two stories otherwise share a similar plot about a couple trying to avoid reality by living in a fantasy world. Plot Summary of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is set on the campus of a small New England University. Both the play and the film have three acts, titled Fun and Games, Walpurgisnacht and The Exorcism.

As the play opens, the two main characters, Martha and George, who Albee named after the famous first couple President George Washington and his wife Martha, are coming home late from a faculty party. Martha is the daughter of the president of the university and her husband is a history professor. Martha tells George she has invited some guests over, a young couple named Nick and Honey, for a few drinks. From the very beginning it’s clear Martha and George have a very rocky relationship. Act One: Fun and Games In Act One, Martha and George spend most of the time taunting and humiliating each other. George makes fun of Martha because of her age and drinking problem while Martha repeatedly berates George for his failures in life. Martha and Honey then excuse themselves so Martha can show Honey to the bathroom. Nick and George talk for a while until Honey returns and immediately asks George about his son, whom Martha had just told her about. George turns around, surprised, and asks “She told you about him?” and then glares upstairs in Martha’s direction.

When Martha returns, she continues to point out George’s shortcomings, such as the fact that he has never been promoted in the history department despite the fact that Martha’s father is the president of the university, all while openly flirting with Nick. When Martha begins to tell an embarrassing story about how she once sucker punched George in front of her father, George appears behind her with a large gun. When he fires it, an umbrella pops out of the end of the gun. Martha continues to berate George, who reacts angrily by smashing a bottle. Honey, who’s had too much to drink and is upset by all the fighting, runs to the bathroom to vomit. Act Two: Walpurgisnacht (Night of the Witches) In Act Two, George and Nick sit outside and discuss personal details of their lives. Nick tells George that the only reason he married Honey is because he thought she was pregnant. He says he later found out it was a hysterical pregnancy and she had just imagined it. George tells Nick a story about his old friends from high school, one of whom accidentally killed his parents. Nick and George rejoin the women inside and before long, begins seductively slow dancing with Nick in front of both George and Honey.

Martha continues to humiliate George by mentioning another one of his failures in life, his novel. The novel was autobiographical and is about a boy who accidentally kills his parents. It becomes clear that George was talking about himself when he told the earlier story to Nick. Martha then reveals that her father wouldn’t allow George to publish the novel and burned it in the fireplace. George becomes so angry that he tries to strangle Martha in front of both guests. George then announces that it’s time to play a game and that this one is called “Get the Guests.” During the game, George reveals Nick and Honey’s secret about her hysterical pregnancy, which prompts Honey to run to the bathroom again and vomit. In an attempt to get back at George, Nick and Martha decide to make out in front of him, although he calmly reads a book and pretends he doesn’t care. At the end of the act, Martha and Nick go upstairs together and George throws his book against the wall. Act Three: The Exorcism Martha appears in the living room after some time and calls for everyone to join her. Nick shows up and then George appears at the door with a bouquet of snapdragons in his hand.

The two argue about whether the moon is up or down, with George insisting that it’s up and Martha stating that she didn’t see it from the bedroom window upstairs. This then leads to a discussion where it is revealed Nick was too drunk to have sex with Martha. Because of his inability to perform, Martha now begins to berate and humiliate Nick. George asks Nick to find Honey so they can play a final game called “Bringing Up Baby.” George says Martha has an overbearing attitude towards their son and then makes her talk about him. After the two tell their son’s life story, George announces that a telegram came while Martha and Nick were upstairs. The telegram said that their son was killed that afternoon in a car accident when he swerved to avoid a porcupine in the road. Martha then screams that he’s not allowed to kill their son and it becomes apparent to Nick and Honey that the son was a fictional character all along. George decided to “kill” their son because Martha broke a rule about never speaking of him to others. Unable to cope with their disappointing lives and with no real bond between them, the couple apparently made up a fictional child to help them deal with the harshness of reality.

Yet, the bitterness and hatred Martha and George have for each other ultimately destroyed this illusion. The play ends with George singing “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” which Martha answers “I am, George, I am.” Critical Reception: The play won the 1962-63 New York Drama Critics Circle award and the Tony Award in 1963. In 1966, the play was made into a movie, written by Ernest Lehman and starring Elizabeth Taylor as Martha and Richard Burton as George. The movie was a box office success and was nominated for 13 academy awards, of which it won five. It has since become a classic and is one of Elizabeth Taylor’s most memorable roles. Sources: “Outsiders Together: Virginia and Leonard Woolf”; Natania Rosenfeld; 2000 “Edward Albee: A Singular Journey : a Biography”; Mel Gussow; 2012 Psychology Today; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Dr. Anne Malave; Dec 18 2012: The Paris Review; The Art of Theater No.

Edward Albee; William Flanagan; Fall issue; 1966 Subscribe to the Virginia Woolf Blog via Email: Share this: About Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf About Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf Bookmark this page Manage My Reading List Understanding the Theater of the Absurd Even though Albee's Who's Afraid of' Virginia Woolf would not be strictly classified as belonging to the movement known as "The Theater of the Absurd," there are, however, a great many elements of this play which are closely aligned with or which grew out of the dramas which are classified as being a part of "The Theater of the Absurd." Furthermore, the movement emerged on the literary scene just prior to and during the beginning of Albee's formative, creative years. Also, his early plays — The Zoo Story, The American Dream, and Sand Box — which will be discussed later, do belong rather directly with the Absurdist movement and they employ most of the themes, motifs, ideas, and techniques found in the plays of "The Theater of the Absurd." Furthermore, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

also utilizes many of the techniques and ideas of his earlier plays — for example, the lost or non-existent child is a constant factor in many of Albee's plays of all periods. Consequently, in its simplest terms, Albee's early short dramas are essential studies to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? his first full length drama. In addition to a knowledge of Albee's own early plays, an understanding of the entire movement of the Theater of the Absurd and the relationship of Albee's early plays to that movement will, in part, illuminate aspects of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? To begin, even though the movement known as the Theater of the Absurd was not a consciously conceived movement, and it has never had any clear cut philosophical doctrines, no organized attempt to win converts, and no meetings, it has characteristics which set it apart from other experiments in drama. Each of the main playwrights of the movement seemed to have developed independently of the other. The playwrights most often connected with the movement are Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov.

The early plays of Edward Albee and Harold Pinter fit into this classification, but they have also written plays that move far away from the Theater of the Absurd. In viewing the plays that comprise this movement, we must forsake the theater of coherently developed situations, we must forsake characterizations that are rooted in the logic of motivation and reaction, we must forget (sometimes) settings that bear an intrinsic, realistic or obvious relationship in the drama as a whole, we must forget the use of language as a tool of logical communication, and we must forget cause and effect relationships found in traditional drama. By their use of a number of puzzling devices, these playwrights have gradually accustomed audiences to a new kind of relationship between theme and presentation. In these seemingly queer and fantastic plays, the external world is often depicted as menacing, devouring, and unknown; the settings and situations often make us vaguely uncomfortable — the world itself seems incoherent and frightening and strange, but at the same time, hauntingly poetic and familiar.

These are some of the reasons which prompt the critic to classify them under the heading "Theater of the Absurd" — a title which comes not from a dictionary definition of the world "absurd," but rather from Martin Esslin's book The Theatre of the Absurd, in which he maintains that these dramatists write from a "sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition." But other writers such as Kafka, Camus, and Sartre have argued from the same philosophical position. The essential difference is that critics like Camus have presented their arguments in a highly formal discourse with logical and precise views which prove their thesis within the framework of traditional forms. On the contrary, the Theater of the Absurd seeks to wed form and content into an indissoluble whole, so as to gain a further unity of meaning and impact.

This theater has, as Esslin has pointed out, "renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition; it merely presents it in being — that is, in terms of concrete stage images of the absurdity of existence." Too often, however, the viewer is tempted to note these basic similarities (and others to be later noted) and to dismiss an individual playwright as merely another absurdist writer. Also, too often, the critic fails to note the distinctive differences in each dramatist. Since these writers (dramatists) do not belong to any deliberate or conscious movement, they should be evaluated for their individual concerns as well as their contributions to the total concept of the Theater of the Absurd. In fact, most of these playwrights consider themselves to be lonely rebels and outsiders, isolated in their own private world. As noted above, there have been no manifestos, no theses, no conferences and no collaborations. Each has developed along his own unique line; each in his own way is individually and distinctly different. Therefore it is important to see how Ionesco both belongs to the Theater of the Absurd and equally important, how he differs from the other writers. First let us note a few of the basic differences.

Differences One of Samuel Beckett's main concerns is with the polarity of existence. In Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Krapp's Last Tape, we have such characteristic polarities as sight versus blindness, life–death, time present–time past, body–intellect, waiting–not waiting, going–not going, and literally dozens more. Beckett's main concern, then, seems to be to place man and characterize man's existence in terms of these polarities. To do this, Beckett groups his characters in pairs, such as Vladimir and Estragon, or Didi and Gogo, Hamm and Clov, Pozzo and Lucky, Nagg and Nell, and Krapp's present voice and past voice. Essentially, however, Beckett's characters remain a puzzle which each individual viewer must solve. In contrast to Beckett, Eugene Ionesco's characters are seen in terms of singularity. Whereas Beckett's characters stand in pairs outside of society but converse with each other, Ionesco's characters are placed in the midst of society, but they stand alone in an alien world with no personal identity and no one to whom they can communicate.

For example, the characters in The Bald Soprano are in society, but scream meaningless phrases at each other and there is no communication. And whereas Beckett's plays take place on strange and alien landscapes (some of his plays remind one of a world already transformed by some holocaust or created by some surrealist), Ionesco's plays are set against the most traditional elements in our society — the standard English drawing room in The Bald Soprano, a typical street scene in Rhinoceros, an average study in The Lesson, and so on. The language of the two playwrights also differs greatly. Beckett's dialogue recalls the disjointed phantasmagoria of a dream world; Ionesco's language is rooted in the banalities, clichés and platitudes of everyday speech; Beckett uses language to show man isolated in a world and unable to communicate because language is a barrier to communication. Ionesco, on the other hand, uses language to show the failure of communication because there is nothing to say; thus in The Bald Soprano, and other plays, the dialogue is filled with clichés and banalities.

In contrast to the basic sympathy we feel for both Beckett's and Ionesco's characters, especially characters like Berenger, Jean Genet's characters almost revile the audience from the moment that they appear on the stage. His theme is more openly stated. He is concerned with the hatred which exists in the world. In The Maids, each maid hates not just her employer and not just her own sister, but also her own self. Therefore, she plays the other roles so as to exhaust her own hatred of herself against herself. Basically, then, there is a great sense of repugnance in Genet's characters. This revulsion derives partially from the fact that Genet's interest, so different from Beckett's and Ionesco's, is in the psychological exploration of man's predilection to being trapped in his own egocentric world rather than facing the realities of existence. Man for Genet is trapped by his own fantastic illusions. Man's absurdity results partially from the fact that he prefers his own disjointed images to those of reality. Thus, in Genet's direction for the production of The Blacks, he writes that the play should never be played before a totally black audience.

If there are no white people present, then one of the Negroes in the audience must wear a white mask; if the Negro refuses, then a white mannequin must be used and the actors must play the drama for this mannequin. Thus there must be a white audience, someone for the Negroes to revile. Since a Negro audience by its color would recognize and prefer the identical images that the actors are creating, there must be the white person to note the distortion of reality. In contrast to Ionesco, Arthur Adamov, in his themes, is more closely aligned to the Kafkaesque of the existentialist school, but his technique is that of the theater of the absurd. His interest is in establishing some proof that the individual does exist, and he shows how man becomes more alienated from his fellow man as he attempts to establish his own personal identity. For example, in Professor Tarrane, the central character, hoping to prove his innocence of a certain accusation, actually convicts himself through his own defense. For Adamov, man attempting to prove his own existence actually proves that he does not exist.

Language, therefore, for Adamov serves as an inadequate system of communication and actually in some cases serves to the detriment of man, since by language and man's use of language, man often finds himself trapped in the circumstances he previously hoped to avoid. Ultimately, Adamov's characters fail to communicate because each is interested only in his own egocentric self. Each character propounds his own troubles and his own achievements, but the words reverberate as against a stone wall. They are heard only by the audience. Adamov's plays are often grounded in the dream-world atmosphere; and while they are presenting a series of outwardly confusing scenes of almost hallucinatory quality, they, at the same time, attack or denounce the confusion present in modern man. Characteristic of all these writers is a notable absence of any excess concern over sex. Edward Albee, an American, differs significantly in his emphasis and concern with the sexual substructure of society.

The overtones of homosexuality in The Zoo Story are carried further until the young man in The American Dream becomes the incarnation of the muscular and ideally handsome young homosexual who, since he has no inner feelings, passively allows anyone "to take pleasure from my groin." In The Sandbox, the angel of death is again seen as the muscle-bound young homosexual who spends his time scantily dressed and performing calisthenics on a beach while preparing for a career in Hollywood. Similarities Although all of the writers have varying concerns, they also have much in common, because their works reflect a moral and philosophical climate in which most of our civilization finds itself today. Again, as noted above, even though there were no manifestos, no organized movements, there are still certain concerns that are basic to all of the writers and Ionesco's works are concerned with these basic ideas or concerns. Beyond the technical and strange illusionary techniques which prompt the critic to group these plays into a category, there are larger and ultimately, more significant concerns by which each dramatist, in spite of his differences, is akin to the other.

Aside from such similarities as violation of traditional beginning, middle, and end (or exposition, complication, and denouement) or the refusal to tell a straight-forward connected story with a nice plot, the disappearance of traditional dramatic forms and techniques, they are also concerned over the failure of communication in modern society which leaves man alienated, and they are concerned over a lack of individuality or an over-emphasis on conformity in our society. They use time and place to imply important ideas, and finally they reject traditional logic for a type of nonlogic which ultimately implies something about the nature of the universe. Implicit in many of these concerns is an attack on a society or world which possesses no set standards of values or behavior. First, let's examine the concern over the lack of communication. In Edward Albee's plays, each character is existing in his own private ego. Each makes a futile attempt to get another character to understand him, but as the attempt is contrived, there is more alienation.

Thus, finally, because of a lack of communication, Peter, the conformist in The Zoo Story, is provoked into killing Jerry, the individualist; or in The Sandbox, a continuation of The American Dream, Mommy and Daddy bury Grandma because she talks incessantly but says nothing significant. The irony is that Grandma is the only character who does say anything significant, but Mommy and Daddy, the people who discard her, are incapable of understanding her. But in Ionesco's plays, this failure of communication leads often to even more drastic results. Like Albee's Zoo Story, the professor in The Lesson must kill the student partly because she doesn't understand his communication. Or Berenger, in The Killers, has uttered so many clichés that by the end of the play, he has even convinced himself that the killers should kill him. In The Chairs, the old people, needing to express their thoughts, address themselves to a mass of empty chairs which, as the play progresses, crowd all else off the stage. In Maid to Marry, communication is so bad that the maid, when she appears on the stage, turns out to be a rather homely man.

And ultimately, in Ionesco's Rhinoceros, the inability to communicate causes an entire race of so-called rational human beings to be metamorphosed into a herd of rhinoceroses thereby abandoning all hopes of language as a means of communication. In Adamov's Professor Taranne, the professor, in spite of all his desperate attempts, is unable to get people to acknowledge his identity because there is no communication. Likewise, Pinter's plays show individuals grouped on the stage, but each person fails to achieve any degree of effective communication. The concern with communication is carried to its illogical extreme in two works: In Genet's The Blacks, one character says "We shall even have the decency — a decency learned from you — to make communication impossible." And in another, Beckett's Act Without Words, we have our first play in this movement to use absolutely no dialogue. And even without dialogue, all the action on the stage suggests the inability of man to communicate. Beckett's characters are tied together by a fear of being left entirely alone and they therefore cling to that last hope of establishing some communication with another.

His plays give the impression of man totally lost in a disintegrating society, or as in Endgame, of man alone after society has already disintegrated. In Waiting for Godot, the two derelicts are seen conversing in repetitive, strangely fragmented dialogue that possesses an illusory, haunting effect, while they are waiting for Godot, a vague, never-defined being who will bring them some communication about — what? Salvation? Death? A reason for living? The impetus for dying? No one knows and the safest thing to say is that the two are waiting for someone (something) which will give them the impetus to continue living and waiting or something which will give them meaning and direction to life. And as Beckett clearly demonstrates, those who rush hither and yon in search of meanings find it no quicker than those who sit and wait. But everyone leaves the theater with the realization that these tramps are strangely tied to one another; and yet, even though they bicker and fight, and even though they have exhausted all conversation — notice that the second act is repetitive and almost identical — the loneliness and weakness in each calls out to the others, and they are held by a mystical bond of interdependence.

But in spite of this strange dependency, neither is able to communicate with the other. The other two characters, Pozzo and Lucky, are on a journey without any apparent goal, and are symbolically tied together. One talks, the other says nothing. The waiting of Vladimir and Estragon and the journeying of Pozzo and Lucky offer themselves as contrasts to various activities in the modern world each leading to no fruitful end; therefore, each pair is hopelessly alienated from the other pair. For example, when Pozzo falls and yells for help, Vladimir and Estragon continue their talk, but throughout their dialogue nothing is communicated; all is hopeless or as Vladimir aphoristically replies to one of Estragon's long discourses, "We are all born mad. Some remain so." In their attempts at conversation and communication, these two tramps have a fastidious correctness and a grave propriety that suggest that they could be socially accepted; but their fastidiousness and propriety are inordinately comic when contrasted with their ragged appearance. Their fumbling ineffectuality in their attempts at conversation seems to represent the ineptness of all mankind in its attempt at communication.

And it rapidly becomes apparent that Vladimir and Estragon, as representatives of modern man, cannot formulate any cogent or useful play of action; and what is more pathetic, they cannot communicate their helpless longings to one another. While failing to possess enough individualism to go their separate ways, they nevertheless are different enough to embrace most of our society. In the final analysis, their one positive gesture lies in their strength to wait. And man is terribly alone in his waiting. Ionesco shows the same ideas in the end of Rhinoceros when we see Berenger totally alone as a result partly of a failure in communication. Each dramatist has, therefore, presented a critique of modern society by showing the total collapse of communication. The technique used is that of evolving a theme about communication by presenting a series of seemingly disjointed speeches. The accumulative effect of these speeches is a devastating commentary on the failure of communication in modern society. In conjunction with the general attack on communication, the second aspect common to the dramatists is the lack of individuality encountered in modern civilization. Generally, the point seems to be that man does not know himself.

He has lost all sense of individualism and either functions isolated and alien or else finds himself lost amid repetition and conformity. Jean Genet's play, The Maids, opens with the maid Claire playing the role of her employer while her sister Solange plays the role of Claire. Therefore, we have Claire calling or referring to Solange as Claire. By the time the audience realizes that the two sisters are imitating someone else, each character has lost her individualism; therefore, as Claire later portrays Solange, who portrays the employer, and vice versa, we gradually realize that part of Genet's intent was to illustrate the total lack of individuality and furthermore, to show that each character becomes vibrantly alive only when functioning in the image of another personality. Other dramatists present their attack on society's destruction of individualism by different means, but the attack still has the same thematic intent. In Albee's The American Dream, Mommy and Daddy are obviously generic names for any mommy and daddy. Albee is not concerned with individualizing his characters. They remain types and as types are seen at times in terms of extreme burlesque.

So, unlike Beckett's tramps, and more like Ionesco's characters, Albee's people are seen as Babbitt-like caricatures and satires on the "American Dream" type, and the characters remain mannequins with no delineations. Thus in Ionesco's The Bald Soprano, the Martins can assume the roles of the Smith's and begin the play over because there is no distinction between the two sets of characters. As emphasized elsewhere in this volume, lonesco has written most extensively about the failure of individualism most effectively in his most famous play, Rhinoceros. To repeat, in this play, our society today has emphasized conformity to such an extent and has rejected individualism so completely that Ionesco demonstrates with inverse logic how stupid it is not to conform with all society and be metamorphosed into a rhinoceros. This play aptly illustrates how two concerns of the absurdists — lack of communication and the lack of individualism — are combined, each to support the other. Much of Ionesco's dialogue in this play seems to be the distilled essence of the commonplace. One cliché follows another.

We are further startled because this dialogue is spoken within the framework of a wildly improbable situation. In a typically common street with the typical common clichés about weather and work being uttered, the morning calm is shattered by a rhinoceros as it charges through the streets. Then two rhinoceroses, then more. Ridiculous arguments then develop as to whether they are African or Asiatic rhinoceroses. We soon learn that there is an epidemic of metamorphoses; all are changing into rhinoceroses. Soon only three individuals are left. Then in the face of this absurd situation, we have the equally appalling justifications and reasons in favor of being metamorphosed advocated in such clichés as "We must join the crowd," "We must move with the times," "We've got to build our life on new foundations," and so on. Suddenly it almost seems foolish not to become a rhinoceros. In the end, Berenger's sweetheart, Daisy, succumbs to the pressure of society, relinquishes her individualism, and joins the society of rhinoceroses — not because she wants to, but rather because she is afraid not to. She cannot revolt against society even to remain a human being.

Berenger is left alone totally isolated, with his individualism. And what good is his humanity in a world of rhinoceroses? At first glance it would seem obvious that Ionesco wishes to indicate the triumph of the individual, who, although caught in a society that has gone mad, refuses to surrender his sense of identity. But if we look more closely, we see that Ionesco has no intention of leaving us on this hopeful and comforting note. In his last speech, Berenger makes it clear that his stand is rendered absurd. What does his humanity avail him in a world of beasts'? Finally, he wishes that he also had changed, only now he realizes that it is too late. All he can do is feebly reassert his joy in being human. His statement carries little conviction. Thus Ionesco has dealt with the haunting theme of the basic meaning and value of personal identity in relationship to society. If one depends entirely upon the society in which one lives for a sense of reality and identity, it is impossible to take a stand against that society without reducing oneself to nothingness in the process.

Berenger instinctively felt repelled by the tyranny that had sprung up around him, but he had no sense of identity that would have enabled him to combat this evil with anything resembling a positive force. Probably any action he could have taken would have led to eventual defeat, but defeat would have been infinitely preferable to the limbo in which he is finally consigned. Thus, Ionesco has masterfully joined two themes: the lack of individualism and the failure of communication. But unlike Beckett who handles the same themes by presenting his characters as derelicts and outcasts from society, Ionesco's treatment seems even more devastating for having placed them in the very middle of the society from which they are estranged. Ultimately, the absurdity of man's condition is partially a result of his being compelled to exist without his individualism and in a society which does not possess any degree of effective communication. Essentially, therefore, the Theater of the Absurd is not a positive drama. It does not try to prove that man is in a meaningless world as did Camus or Sartre: it does not offer any solutions: instead, it demonstrates the absurdity and illogicality of the world we live in.

Nothing is ever settled: there are no positive statements; no conclusions are ever reached and what few actions there are have no meaning, particularly in relation to the action. That is, one action carries no more significance than does its opposite action. For example, the man tying his shoe in The Bald Soprano — a common event — is magnified into a fantastic act while the appearance of rhinoceroses in the middle of a calm afternoon is not at all memorable and evokes only the most trite and insignificant remarks. Also, Pozzo and Lucky's frantic running and searching are no more important than Vladimir and Estragon's sitting and waiting. And Genet presents his blacks as outcasts from and misfits in society but refrains from making any positive statement regarding the black person's role in our society — the question of whether society is to be integrated or segregated is to Genet a matter of perfect indifference. It would still be society and the individual would still be outside it. No conclusions or resolutions can ever be offered because these plays are essentially circular and repetitive in nature.

The Bald Soprano begins over again with a new set of characters, and other plays end at the same point at which they began, thus obviating any possible conclusions or positive statements. The American Dream ends with the coming of a second child, this time one that is fully grown and the twin to the other child who had years before entered the family as a baby and upset the static condition; thus, thematically, the play ends as it began. Therefore, in all of these playwrights and dramas, the sense of repetition, the circular structure, the static quality, the lack of cause and effect, and the lack of apparent progression all suggest the sterility and lack of values in the modern world. Early critics referred to the Theater of the Absurd as a theater in transition, meaning that it was to lead to something different. So far this has not happened and moreover it is rapidly becoming accepted as a distinct genre in its own right. The themes utilized by these dramatists are not new: thus, the success of the plays must often depend upon the effectiveness of the technique and the new ways by which the dramatists illustrate their themes. But the techniques are still so new that many people are confused by a production of one of these plays.

But more important, if the technique serves to emphasize the absurdity of man's position in the universe, then to present this concept by a series of ridiculous situations is only to render man's position more absurd; and in actuality, the techniques then reinforce that condition which the dramatists bewail. In other words, to present the failure of communication by a series of disjointed and seemingly incoherent utterances lends itself to the accusation that functionalism is carried to a ridiculous extreme. But this is what the absurdist wanted to do. He was tired of logical discourses pointing out step by step the absurdity of the universe: he began with the philosophical premise that the universe is absurd, and then created plays which illustrated conclusively that the universe is indeed absurd and that perhaps this play is an additional absurdity. In conclusion, if the public can accept these unusual uses of technique to support thematic concerns, then do we have plays which present, dramatically, powerful and vivid views on the absurdity of the human condition — an absurdity which is the result of society's destruction of individualism, of the failure of communication, of being forced to conform to a world of mediocrity, where no action is meaningful?

And as the tragic outcasts of these plays are presented in terms of Burlesque, man is reminded that his position and that of human existence in general is essentially absurd. Every play in the Theater of the Absurd mirrors the chaos and basic disorientation of modern man. Each laughs in anguish at the confusion that exists in contemporary society, hence, all share a basic point of view, while varying widely in scope and structure. The Setting of the Play The setting of the drama is in a university town which in itself gives a special aura to the play. The characters in the drama represent the types of people who have been given the most disciplined training in the best that has been thought and said throughout the history of civilization. Consequently, we are exposed to several very civilized people acting in a way that is at times uncivilized and barbaric. The name of the town that George and Martha live in is called New Carthage. Carthage is the name of the ancient classical city which was the site of the great love story of Dido and Aeneas and was ultimately destroyed because it was a city of "unholy loves," as St. Augustine referred to it. The stage setting itself is also significant.

Even though the script does not call for it, George and Martha's living room (the only set for the play) usually has a picture of George and Martha Washington displayed somewhere in clear view of the audience. In addition, there is traditionally an American flag on a stand (or otherwise displayed) and/or an American eagle or coat of arms prominently displayed somewhere. The Title of the Play On the most basic level, the title is the substitution of the name of the famous British novelist Virginia Woolf for the name of the Big Bad Wolf of the nursery rhyme. The obvious correlation is the homophonic relationship of the last names — Woolf and Wolf. The hilarity which the substitution causes can be accounted for most directly as the result of the drunkenness of the guest who, in a drunken stupor, finds the intellectualizing of a nursery rhyme to be unaccountably comic. The use of the nursery rhyme, however, becomes central to the "fun and games" which characterize so much of the drama. Other than the obvious similarity of the last names, the title seems to make an oblique comment on the drama itself.

In the nursery rhyme which deals with fear of the unknown or possible evil in the person of the big bad wolf, the first two pigs ignore the possibility of the evil of the wolf and, as a result, are destroyed. The third little pig, recognizing the danger of the wolf, makes provisions against destruction and consequently survives. Characters in the novels of Virginia Woolf can often be characterized as being apprehensive about, if not terrified of, life, and, like the first two little pigs, fail to make (or are unable to make) the proper provisions to cope with life. Virginia Woolf's own life was characterized by periods of madness, and so it is not surprising that she should deal in her novels with the intolerability of life and subsequent madness. The reference, then, to Virginia Woolf could function as a portent because George and Martha are playing a dangerous game which could drive either or both of them into madness since both of their lives are intolerable. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This!

Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ( 1966 ) TV-MA | A bitter, aging couple, with the help of alcohol, use a young couple to fuel anguish and emotional pain towards each other. Director: From $2.00 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 22 titles created 03 Feb 2014 a list of 48 titles created 04 Aug 2014 a list of 23 titles created 28 May 2015 a list of 48 titles created 11 months ago a list of 23 titles created 3 months ago Title: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) 8.1/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 5 Oscars. Another 17 wins & 23 nominations.

See more awards » Videos 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8.1/10 X Brick, an alcoholic ex-football player, drinks his days away and resists the affections of his wife, Maggie. His reunion with his father, Big Daddy, who is dying of cancer, jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son. Director: Richard Brooks Disturbed Blanche DuBois moves in with her sister in New Orleans and is tormented by her brutish brother-in-law while her reality crumbles around her. Director: Elia Kazan A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter. Director: Mike Nichols Bonnie Parker, a bored waitress falls in love with an ex-con named Clyde Barrow and together they start a violent crime spree through the country, robbing cars and banks. Director: Arthur Penn An ingenue insinuates herself into the company of an established but aging stage actress and her circle of theater friends. Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz Sprawling epic covering the life of a Texas cattle rancher and his family and associates.

Director: George Stevens A woman is asked to spy on a group of Nazi friends in South America. How far will she have to go to ingratiate herself with them? Director: Alfred Hitchcock A poor boy gets a job working for his rich uncle and ends up falling in love with two women. Director: George Stevens A care-free girl is sold to a traveling entertainer, consequently enduring physical and emotional pain along the way. Director: Federico Fellini Edit Storyline George and Martha are a middle aged married couple, whose charged relationship is defined by vitriolic verbal battles, which underlies what seems like an emotional dependence upon each other. This verbal abuse is fueled by an excessive consumption of alcohol. George being an associate History professor in a New Carthage university where Martha's father is the President adds an extra dimension to their relationship. Late one Saturday evening after a faculty mixer, Martha invites Nick and Honey, an ambitious young Biology professor new to the university and his mousy wife, over for a nightcap. As the evening progresses, Nick and Honey, plied with more alcohol, get caught up in George and Martha's games of needing to hurt each other and everyone around them.

The ultimate abuse comes in the form of talk of George and Martha's unseen sixteen year old son, whose birthday is the following day. Written by Huggo Taglines: You are cordially invited to George and Martha's for an evening of fun and games. See more » Genres: 22 June 1966 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia According to cinematographer Haskell Wexler , even though Elizabeth Taylor had intentionally gained weight for the role and de-glamorized herself, she still didn't want to have to eat too much in the opening scene when she is noshing on a chicken leg. See more » Goofs When George and Nick are outside talking under the large tree, George pours a small amount of bourbon into Nick's glass. A second later, we see the glass has much more bourbon in it than was originally poured. See more » Quotes (Northern CA) – See all my reviews Simply put, this is one of my favourite films of all time. Great acting, great writing and great camerawork make this close to cinematic perfection.

Liz Taylor and Richard Burton give the performances of their lives. Sandy Dennis also shines in an early-ish role. It's a dramatic film, but the wicked humour that permeates the film is absolutely devastating, and I mean that in the best possible way. Many moments in the film I find myself laughing only to think, "Should I be laughing at this." Certainly the film is loaded with uncomfortable moments, enhanced by the camerawork replete with uneasy close-ups. Most of all, this film shows how a lot can be accomplished with just a little: a cast of four and minimal scenery changes. "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" has become an absolute icon of American cinema. If you haven't seen it, what are you waiting for? 40 of 55 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Character Analysis of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Updated March 02, 2016. Origin / Meaning of the Title: How did playwright Edward Albee come up with the title? According to a 1966 interview in the Paris Review, Albee found the question scrawled in soap on the bathroom of a New York bar.

About ten years later, when he began writing the play, he recalled the “rather typical, university intellectual joke.” But what does it mean? When I was a child, I remember my parents talked about this play and the theatrical version starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. My eight-year-old mind assumed that the title, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” referred to some cartoon wolf named Virginia, perhaps the Big Bad Wolf’s mother seeking revenge against that self-righteous brick-laying pig. Of course, during college, I found out more about Virginia Woolf. She was a brilliant writer and women’s rights advocate. continue reading below our video 10 Facts About the Titanic That You Don't Know In addition, she sought to live her life without false illusions. So then, the question of the play’s title becomes: “Who is afraid of facing reality?” And the answer is: Most of us. Certainly the tumultuous characters George and Martha are lost in their drunken, everyday illusions.

By the play’s end, each audience member is left to wonder, “Do I create false illusions of my own?” George and Martha: A Match Made in Hell The play begins with the middle-aged couple, George and Martha, returning from a faculty party arranged by George’s father-in-law (and employer), the president of the small New England college. George and Martha are intoxicated and it’s two o’clock in the morning. But that won’t stop them from entertaining two guests, the college’s new Biology professor and his “mousy” wife. What follows is the world’s most awkward and volatile social engagement. Martha and George function by insulting and verbally attacking one another. Sometimes the insults generate laughter: Martha: You’re going bald. Martha: I swear . . . if you existed I’d divorce you…. Martha is constantly reminding George of his failures. She feels he is “a blank, a cipher.” She often tells the young guests, Nick and Honey, that her husband had so many chances to succeed professionally, yet he has failed throughout his life. Perhaps Martha’s bitterness stems from her own desire of success.

She frequently mentions her “great” father, and how humiliating it is to be paired with a mediocre “associate professor” instead of the head of the History department. Oftentimes, she pushes his buttons until George threatens violence. In some cases he purposefully breaks a bottle to show his rage. In Act Two, when Martha laughs at his failed attempts as a novelist, George grabs her by the throat and chokes her. If not for Nick forcing them apart, George might have become a murderer. And yet, Martha does not seem surprised by George’s outburst of brutality. We can assume that the violence, like many of their other activities, is merely another vicious game that they occupy themselves with throughout their dismal marriage. It also does not help that George and Martha appear to be “full-blown” alcoholics. Destroying The Newlyweds: George and Martha not only delight and disgust themselves by attacking each other. They also take a cynical pleasure in breaking down the naïve married couple. George views Nick as a threat to his job, even though Nick teaches biology – not history.

Pretending to be a friendly drinking buddy, George listens as Nick confesses that he and his wife became married because of a “hysterical pregnancy” and because Honey’s father is wealthy. Later on in the evening, George uses that information to hurt the young couple. Similarly, Martha takes advantage of Nick by seducing him at the end of Act Two. She does this mainly to hurt George, who has been denying her physical affection throughout the evening. However, Martha’s erotic pursuits are left unfulfilled. Nick is too intoxicated to perform, and Martha insults him by calling him a “flop” and a “houseboy.” George also preys upon Honey. He discovers her secret fear of having children – and possibly her miscarriages or abortions. He cruelly asks her: George: How do you make your secret little murders stud-boy doesn’t know about, huhn? Pills? Pills? You got a secret supply of pills? Or what? Apple jelly? Will Power? By the end of the evening, she declares she wants to have a child.

Prev 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?': Read THR's 1966 Review | Hollywood Reporter 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?': Read THR's 1966 Review 10:05 AM PST 11/20/2014 by THR Staff Photofest "The screen has never held a more shattering and indelible drama than Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" On June 22, 1966, The Hollywood Reporter reviewed the directorial debut of Mike Nichols, giving high praise to every aspect of the drama. Read the review below, originally titled "'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' Is a Motion Picture Masterpiece." The screen has never held a more shattering and indelible drama than Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee's stage play was a masterpiece. The makers of this film have created from it a motion picture masterpiece. It will be nominated for every category it fits in next year's Academy Awards, and it deserves to win them all. It will tote up an equally impressive score at the boxoffice. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is an instant film classic, and Warner Bros.

deserves the highest credit for making it a movie without compromise. Virginia Woolf is a drama that encompasses the whole relationship of man and woman; love and hate, tenderness and cruelty, sad and funny. Ernest Lehman, who produced the picture, also wrote the screenplay. Although it is a true screenplay, he has wisely preserved almost all the Albee language, using his own gifts at making it viable as film. A screenplay is not all dialogue, a hard fact to remember, but this is Lehman's most potent contribution. Virginia Woolf is not a play that is hard to bring to life; it bursts with vitality. It is a hard play to kill, as a reviewer who has seen it in six or eight productions, from Broadway to Long Beach, can testify. Film is something else. And the greatest credit for the implacable engagement that the film creates for its audience must go to the director, Mike Nichols. Nichols makes a stunning film bow with Virginia Woolf. To clear away one subtlety immediately, Virginia Woolf refers, of course, to the late English writer. The meaning is peripheral. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

is a mixture of pop art and pedantry of the sort indulged in by scholastic types. Such types, in essence, are the hero and heroine of our film. Their names are George and Martha, and they are played by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Martha is the daughter of a college president. George is a history teacher in father's college. He is a failure, as Martha reminds him; "bogged down in the history department," she says, calling him, with some oblique affection, "Old Swampy." Their marriage, too, is a magnificent wreck, a hulk that drifts like the flying Dutchman, a menace to navigation and travelers on the uncertain seas. On the fateful night when the action of the movie occurs, it crosses the path of another young couple. They are called Nick and Honey, and are played by George Segal and Sandy Dennis. The action of the story is almost continuous, or seems so, beginning early in the morning after a faculty party and lasting until the cold dawn, with icy fingertips, climbs again over the rim of the day, and with chill blue light restores reality. During the night, George and Martha have exchanged badinage of a particularly lethal nature.

"There isn't an abomination award you have won," says George to Martha at one point. "You're going bald," she says to him cheerlessly at another point. "So are you," he replies. That is a mild example of their fencing and probably unfair to quote out of context. There has been no more brilliant and scathing dialogue in any American play. Just "blood under the bridge," Burton remarks of one incident, accurately, summing up the married life he has endured and fostered. Albee divided his play into three acts, giving each act a title, respectively: Fun and Games, Walpurgisnacht and The Exorcism. Lehman and Nichols have retained the rhythm, and in a delicate way, the separation of the moods. George and Martha begin the late night — and early morning — with one of their customary rows, fairly good-natured, only occasionally drawing blood. The temper changes when Martha breaks one of the rules that they have tacitly established for their combat. With the visiting couple, Nick and Honey, present, she introduces mention of a son. A real son to Martha and George? The point is moot until Albee and Lehman spin out their story.

"Truth and illusion," one character or another remarks. Which is which? Having broken the rules for their private game, George and Martha then begin a bare-knuckled, knee-and-groin duologue that breaks them both before the night is out. That is what the play is, a long, long night of conflict between two people locked in a not quite hopeless embrace. They have been through the thick and thin of a tumultuous marriage, and it has been very thick and very thin at times. To take a word from Albee, the plot is almost unbelievably "convoluted." Meanings beneath meanings are repeatedly exposed as one layer after another is peeled away. But a complete understanding to all this is not necessary. It is there, put there by a writer, director and actors of extraordinary acumen and ability. But the surface is enough and will be fascinating. Much has been made of the directness of speech and the situations in Virginia Woolf. It is vulgar, profane and obscene. But to a purpose. And, in truth, probably less blasphemous in its portrait of life than the cotton candy versions. Children may not attend Virginia Woolf unless accompanied by parents.

One cannot escape the thought: will Peter Pan better prepare them for life? Elizabeth Taylor reaches the fullest of her powers as Martha. The actress' beauty and the richness of her personal life have repeatedly obscured the fact that she can be, when she cares to be, an actress of extraordinary power. She is purposely blowzy and flabby in this role. Her clothes and makeup deliberately make a ruin of the great beauty. Her voice is as coarse as her speech. A drinker of awesome capacity, Martha has debased herself in every physical way, and Miss Taylor must suggest this. Only at the end, as the camera focuses on her face and then on her hand, locked with her husband's, does some of the eternal girl and eternal optimist, forever disillusioned, leak out. Miss Taylor is a prime reason the film seems so very seldom a drama, and almost always a violation of privacy, captured with hidden cameras and microphones. Richard Burton as George, must underplay to Miss Taylor's vehemence. Although she can strike and wound, he is the master of the situation, recoiling, reassessing, and prepared to return to battle with fresh armies. Martha speaks in what seems direct, violent language.

George indulges constantly in circumlocutions. In the final climactic scene, as Miss Taylor tells about their son, Burton in the background in tones the Dies Irae, the mass for the dead. It is a rending performance. Again it is not necessary to know all these subtleties to be impressed by their use. Burton has continuous grasp of the character and the story. It is he who is ringmaster, in a sense, but one whose primacy over the arena is repeatedly threatened. Burton's eyes, such as the scene where Segal inadvertently reveals his weakness, illumine the screen and the story with as much fervor as another actor's shouts. Segal demonstrates a talent that until now, on the screen, at any rate, was only latent. Miss Dennis, as his wife, makes a smashing screen bow. Segal plays one of the men of the future, as Burton puts it, one of those scientists who is going to "rearrange all the chromosomes" to produce a perfect race. Segal must be glib, assured, and then be snapped and broken, and retain some of his cockiness (in one meaning or another), but be different.

Segal invests the role with all of these variations. Miss Dennis, as the daughter of a man of God (who spent God's money and kept his own) is poignant and funny. She is the waif of the world, and achieves sympathy, but she is also one of the bores of the world, and she gets this quality, too. Lehman's screenplay deletes one blunt word of the original and changes another. The latter change, where Burton addresses Miss Dennis, is a curious one, but it cannot be gone into here. One important moment where Miss Taylor describes Segal's performance as a lover, seemed to slip by the preview audience. It was muffled, perhaps purposely, although it lost a laugh. These are not adverse criticisms. They are comments on the whole. Haskell Wexler did the photography, in the black and white it called for. Fortunately, no one felt the overwhelming need to create a new style. Wexler has made his camera the handmaiden of the story and its wide and diverse meanings. It moves like a wily but congenial Inquisitor, displaying, revealing, highlighting. Alex North's music generally allows the words to make their own cacophony and symphony.

His score introduces the story and provides some connective links, and does so with ingenuity and meaning. Sam O'Steen's editing catches it all, the fury and the quiet. It catches the pace and never releases it. M.A. Merrick's sound, with all the moving cameras and brilliant, difficult lines, is always crystalline. Richard Sylbert's production design creates a home for George and Martha as demented and cluttered as their minds. Set decoration by George James Hopkins is appropriate down to the glassware favored in the George and Martha household: old jelly glasses. Irene Sharaff's costumes help tell the story, including Miss Dennis' fur jacket, one of those garments composed of small skins that look as if the wearer had trapped the animals himself. Gordan Bau's makeup and Sydney Guilaroff's hair style for Miss Taylor both deserve a nod for helping deface Miss Taylor without being obvious or grotesque. Bernard Shaw in his days as a drama critic, once remarked something to the effect that most shows reduced the critic to mere advertiser for entertainments of dubious value. But, occasionally, he said, there was a presentation that gave the critic the satisfaction of being the servant to a high art.

That is the effect produced by Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — James Powers SparkNotes: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Home → SparkNotes → Literature Study Guides → Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee by asai , June 20, 2013 i cant take the quiz. plz help by anon_2223126975 , November 12, 2014 I believe that some analysis on the metaphors allusive to the Cold War should be added. Movie Review - - Screen: Funless Games at George and Martha's:Albee's 'Virginia Woolf' Becomes a Film - NYTimes.com Screen: Funless Games at George and Martha's:Albee's 'Virginia Woolf' Becomes a Film By STANLEY KAUFFMANN Published: June 24, 1966 EDWARD ALBEE'S "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", the best American play of the last decade and a violently candid one, has been brought to the screen without pussyfooting.

(It is now at the Criterion and Loew's Tower East.) This in itself makes it a notable event in our film history. About the film as such, there is more to be said. First things first. The most pressing question—since we already know a great deal about the play and the two stars—is the direction. Mike Nichols, after a brilliant and too-brief career as a satirist, proved to be a brilliant theatrical director of comedy. This is his debut as a film director, and it is a successful Houdini feat. Houdini, you remember, was the magician who was chained hand and foot, bound in a sack, dumped in a river, and then appeared some minutes later on the surface. You do not expect Olympic swimming form in a Houdini; the triumph is just to come out alive. Which Mr. Nichols has done. He was given two world-shaking stars, the play of the decade and the auspices of a large looming studio. What more inhibiting conditions could be imagined for a first film, if the director is a man of talent? But Mr. Nichols has at least survived. The form is not Olympic, but he lives.

Any transference of a good play to film is a battle. (Which is why the best film directors rarely deal with good plays.) The better the play, the harder it struggles against leaving its natural habitat, and Mr. Albee's extraordinary comedy-drama has put up a stiff fight. Ernest Lehman, the screen adapter, has broken the play out of its one living-room setting into various rooms in the house and onto the lawn, which the play accepts well enough. He has also placed one scene in a roadhouse, which is a patently forced move for visual variety. These changes and some minor cuts, including a little inconsequential blue-penciling, are about the sum of his efforts. The real job of "filmizing" was left to the director. With no possible chance to cut loose cinematically (as, for example, Richard Lester did in his film of the stage comedy "The Knack"), Mr. Nichols has made the most of two elements that were left to him—intimacy and acting.

He has gone to school to several film masters (Kurosawa among them, I would guess) in the skills of keeping the camera close, indecently prying; giving us a sense of his characters' very breath, bad 'breath, held breath; tracking a face—in the rhythm of the scene—as the actor moves, to take us to other faces; punctuating with sudden withdrawals to give us a brief, almost dispassionate respite; then plunging us in close again to one or two faces, for lots of pores and bile. There is not much that is original in Mr. Nichols's camerawork, no sense of the personality that we got in his stage direction. In fact, the direction is weakest when he gets a bit arty: electric signs flashing behind heads or tilted shots from below to show passion and abandon (both of them hallmarks of the college cinema virtuoso). But he has minimized the "stage" feeling, and he has given the film an insistent presence, good phrasing and a nervous drive. It sags toward the end, but this is because the third act of the play sags. As for the acting, Mr. Nichols had Richard Burton as George.

(To refresh us all, George is a fortyish history professor, married to Martha, the daughter of the president of a New England college. They return home from a party at 1:30 A.M., slightly sozzled, drenched in their 20-year-old marital love-hate ambivalence. A young faculty couple come over for drinks, and the party winds viciously on until dawn. In the course of it, Martha sleeps with the young man as an act of vengeance on George. The play ends with George's retribution—the destruction of their myth about a son they never had. Mr. Burton was part of the star package with which this film began, but—a big but—Mr. Burton is also an actor. He has become a kind of specialist in sensitive self-disgust, as witness the latter scenes of "Cleopatra" and all of "The Spy Who Came In from the Cold," and he does it well. He is not in his person the George we might imagine, but he is utterly convincing as a man with a great lake of nausea in him, on which he sails with regret and compulsive amusement. On past evidence, Mr. Nichols had relatively little work to do with Mr.

Burton. On past evidence, he had a good deal to do with Elizabeth Taylor, playing Martha. She has shown previously, in some roles, that she could respond to the right director and could at least flagellate herself into an emotional state (as in "Suddenly, Last Summer"). Here, with a director who knows how to get an actor's confidence and knows what to do with it after he gets it, she does the best work of her career, sustained and urgent. Of course, she has an initial advantage. Her acceptance of gray hair and her use of profanity make her seem to be acting even (figuratively) before she begins. ("Gee, she let them show her looking old! Wow, she just said 'Son of a bitch'! A star!") It is not the first time an American star has gotten mileage out of that sort of daring. Miss Taylor does not have qualities that, for instance, Uta Hagen had in the Broadway version, no suggestion of endlessly coiled involutions. Her venom is nearer the surface. But, under Mr.

Nichols's hand, she gets vocal variety, never relapses out of the role, and she charges it with the utmost of her powers—which is an achievement for any actress, great or little. As the younger man, George Segal gives his usual good terrier performance, lithe and snapping, with nice bafflement at the complexities of what he thought was simply a bad marriage. As his bland wife, Sandy Dennis is credibly bland. Mr. Albee's play looks both better and a little worse under the camera's magnification. A chief virtue for me is that it is not an onion-skin play—it does not merely strip off layers, beginning at the surface with trifles and digging deeper as it proceeds. Of course, we learn more about the characters as we go, and almost all of it is fascinating; but, like its giant forebear, Strindberg's "Dance of Death," the play begins in in hell, and all the revelations and reactions take place within that landscape. What does not wear well in the generally superb dialogue is the heavy lacing of vaudeville cross-talk, particularly facile non sequiturs. (Also, in Mr.

Lehman's version, so much shouting and slamming takes place on the front lawn at four in the morning that we keep wondering why a neighbor doesn't wake up and complain.) More serious is the heightened impression that the myth of the son is irrelevant to the play. It seems a device that the author tacked on to conclude matters as the slash and counterslash grew tired; a device that he then went back and planted earlier. Else why would Martha have told the other woman the secret of the son so glibly—not when she was angry or drunk—if she knew she was breaching an old and sacred compact with her husband? It obtrudes as an arbitrary action to justify the ending. The really relevant unseen character is not the son; it is Martha's father, the president of the college. It is he whom she idolizes and measures her husband against, it is his presence George has to contend with in and out of bed. It is Daddy's power, symbolic in Martha, that keeps the visiting couple from leaving, despite circumstances that would soon have driven them out of any other house.

Awareness—of this truth about Daddy, of multiple other truths about themselves and their world—is the theme of this play: not the necessity of narcotic illusion about the son, but naked, peeled awareness. Under the vituperation and violence, under Martha's aggressive and self-punishing infidelties, this is the drama of a marriage flooded with more consciousness than the human psyche is at present able to bear. Their world is too much with them, their selves are much too clear. It is the price to be paid for living in a cosmos of increasing clarity—which includes a clearer view of inevitable futilities. And, fundamentally, it is this desperation—articulated in childless, broken-hearted, demonically loving marriage—that Mr. Albee has crystallized in his flawed but fine play. And in its forthright dealing with the play, this becomes one of the most scathingly honest American films ever made. Its advertisements say, "No one under 18 will be admitted unless accompanied by his parent." This may safeguard the children; the parents must take their chances.

The Cast WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?— Screenplay by Ernest Lehman, based on the play by Edward Albee; directed by Mike Nichols; produced by Mr. Lehman, presented by Warner Brothers. At the Criterion Theater, Broadway and 45th Street and the Tower East Theater, Third Avenue and 72d Street. Running time: 130 minutes. Martha . . . . . Elizabeth Taylor

Question: Who wrote the play "Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf'?
Answer: EDWARD ALBEE