Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

George is an associate professor of history, and Martha, his wife, is the daughter of the president of the college where George teaches. After they return home from a faculty party, Martha reveals she has invited a young married couple she met at the party over for a drink. Just before the couple—Nick and Honey—arrive, George gives a vague warning about "the bit with the kid" that Martha appears to understand.

As the four drink, Martha and George engage in scathing verbal abuse of each other in front of Nick and Honey. These interactions embarrass the younger couple, but they stay. At a point, Honey lets on that Martha told her about their son, which appears to unnerve George. After this, Martha's taunts and George's passive aggression only increase. When Martha launches into an embarrassing story about how she humiliated him with a sucker punch at a backyard party, George disappears. The story continues, with Nick and Honey laughing, until George appears with a rifle and fires at Martha. To their surprise, a Chinese parasol pops out of the gun barrel. Everyone finds this extremely funny, but Martha's taunts quickly resume, culminating in Martha relating how her father thought George would eventually rise to lead the college but George's lack of ambition has made him pathetic to Martha, who calls him a "great big fat flop."[1] George reacts violently by breaking a bottle. Honey, who has grown more and more deliriously drunk, quickly runs to the bathroom to vomit, leaving George alone with glass all over the room.

(Traditionally, "Walpurgisnacht" is the name of an annual witches' meeting, satiric in the context of the play.)

Nick returns to find George alone. As they talk about their wives, Nick reveals that Honey once had a "hysterical pregnancy". George tells Nick about a time he went to a gin mill with some boarding school classmates, one of whom had accidentally killed his mother by shooting her. This friend was mocked for ordering "bergin" (bourbon). The following summer, the young friend was driving with his father and suddenly swerved to avoid a porcupine, accidentally killing his father. The boy was then sent to an asylum and became mute. As the story concludes, George and Nick discuss children, but the conversation turns insulting before Martha and Honey return.

Honey calls for music, so they put a record on. Because George refuses to dance, Martha dances with Nick, taunting George by making the dance very sensual while also telling another embarrassing story about George: his efforts to publish a novel about a boy who accidentally killed both of his parents (with the insinuation that the deaths were actually murder), but Martha's father would not let it be published. George attacks Martha, but Nick separates them. Clearly not satisfied, George launches into a new "game" called "Get the Guests," in which George begins telling a story about a "mousie" that is a thinly-veiled retelling of everything Nick has told George about Honey, including her alcoholism and her "hysterical pregnancy," implying that Honey "trapped" Nick into marrying her by pretending to be pregnant. Honey, devastated, runs to the bathroom again to throw up.

Martha begins to openly seduce Nick in the living room right in front of George, who blithely smiles and pretends to read a book. This greatly annoys Martha, who tell George that if he does nothing to stop her, she'll have sex with Nick. George is unmoved, so Martha goes upstairs with Nick. Immediately, an enraged George throws his book against the house's doorbell chimes, which ring out as he promises to make Martha "regret this."

(In all productions until 2005, Honey then returns, wondering who rang the doorbell. George then interrogates Honey about her pregnancy, then openly tells Honey that he is going to inform Martha that their son has died. In what is labeled the "Definitive Edition" of the script, however, this scene is cut.)[2]

(Exorcism is the expulsion or attempted expulsion of a supposed evil spirit from a person or place.)

Martha enters into an empty living room and shouts for the others to come out of hiding. Nick joins her. The doorbell rings, and George enters carrying snapdragons and making literary jokes that Martha seems to actually enjoy. Martha and George then argue about whether the moon is up, an odd game whose metaphors reveal that Nick was too drunk to have sex with Martha upstairs.

George asks Nick to bring Honey back for the final game, "Bringing Up Baby." Nick and Honey sit helplessly as George, at last, talks openly about his and Martha's son. As he accuses Martha of being overbearing to their son, she protests, leading George to ask for her "recitation." Martha agrees, and begins recalling their son's beauty and talents and accuses George of ruining his life. As she speaks, George recites sections of the Libera me (part of the Requiem Mass, the Latin mass for the dead) and Kyrie eleison (ancient Greek: "Lord, have mercy").

This continues until George informs Martha that the doorbell earlier was a messenger from Western Union arriving with a telegram that George says informed him that their son was dead, having been killed in a car crash when he swerved to avoid a porcupine—the exact wording that George earlier used in a story about a completely different person. Martha demands proof, but George insists on the reality of the situation. Martha, distraught, collapses. It slowly dawns on Nick that the son George and Martha have been talking about is not real. The fictional son is a "game" the two have been playing since discovering early in their marriage that they are infertile. George has decided to "kill" him because Martha broke the game's single rule: not to mention the boy to anyone else.

Overcome with pity, Nick and Honey leave. Martha suggests they could invent a new imaginary child, but George insists they cannot. The play ends with George singing "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?", a joke song someone sang that night at the faculty party. Martha weakly replies, "I am, George. I am."

Albee has said that the title of the play "means who’s afraid of the big bad wolf ... who’s afraid of living life without false illusions."[3][4]^(pp 71-72) Albee's interest in the theme of reality versus illusion is expressed in a number of his plays. In discussing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? he cites Nietzsche's interpretation of the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy of ancient Greek drama, as described in The Birth of Tragedy. Albee says,

There was a time when people believed in deities. And then revolutions came – industrial, French, Freudian, Marxist. God and absolutes vanished. Individuals find this very difficult and uncomfortable. All they have left is fantasy or the examination of the self.[5]

According to Lawrence Kingsley, Albee's characters create illusions to help them evade feelings of their own inadequacy – as "George and Martha have evaded the ugliness of their marriage by taking refuge in illusion." The play demonstrates "how his characters must rid themselves of falsehood and return to the world in which they must live."[4]^{(pp 71–74)}

The distinction between truth and illusion is at times deliberately unclear. The existence of the child, the "murder" by George of his parents, or Honey's "pregnancy" may be illusions, but they still seem real to the characters. Illusions may be exorcised in the play, but no truth or apparent reality is supplied in its place. "All truth", George says, "[becomes] relative".[6]

Christopher Bigsby asserts that this play opposes the idea of a perfect American family and societal expectations as it "attacks the false optimism and myopic confidence of modern society".[7] Albee takes a heavy-handed approach to displaying this contrast, making examples of every character and their expectations of the people around them. Societal norms of the 1950s consisted of a nuclear family, two parents and two (or more) children. This conception was picturesque in the idea that the father was the breadwinner, the mother a housewife, and the children well-behaved.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? smashes these conventions and shows realistic families that are far from perfect and possibly ruined. The families of Honey and Martha were dominated by their fathers, with no sign of a mother figure in their lives. George and Martha's chance at a perfect family was ruined by infertility and George's failure to become a prominent figure at the university.

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 the rights to the Disney song are expensive, most stage versions, and the film, have Martha sing to the tune of "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush", a melody that 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.

Albee described the inspiration for the title:

I was in there [at a saloon in New York] 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.[8]

The title phrase happened to appear five years before the play's premiere, in a 1957 issue of The New Yorker:

A coffee fiend we know dropped into an espresso joint in Greenwich Village the other day and found himself whiling away his time reading the graffiti on the wall beside his chair. Most of the stuff was pretty humdrum, but he was arrested by a legend, done in elegant calligraphy, that read, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?"[9]

The New Yorker responded in 2013 by suggesting that perhaps the graffiti that Albee saw was the same graffiti that The New Yorker reported in 1957.[10]

In an interview, Albee said Martha and George were based on two of his friends, the married New York socialites Willard Maas and Marie Menken.[11] Maas was a professor of literature at Wagner College and Menken was an experimental filmmaker and painter. Maas and Menken were known for their infamous salons, where drinking would "commence at 4 PM on Friday and end in the wee hours of night on Monday" (according to Gerard Malanga, an Andy Warhol associate and friend to Maas). The primary conflict between George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? derived from Maas's and Menken's tempestuous and volatile relationship.

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

Because of the play's unusual length (over three hours), the producers also cast a matinee company that performed twice a week, featuring Kate Reid as Martha, Shepperd Strudwick as George, Avra Petrides as Honey and Bill Berger as Nick.[12] As with the evening company, these matinee performances also sold out.[13]

The play closed on 16 May 1964, after 5 previews and 664 performances.[14] It opened in London in 1965, starring Constance Cummings.

In 1963, Columbia Masterworks released a four-LP (long-playing) boxed recording of the original Broadway cast performing the entire play, directed by Alan Schneider.

The release contained a 16 page booklet with photos from the original production, critical essays by Harold Clurman and Walter Kerr, cast and crew biographies, and a short article by Goddard Lieberson on the task of recording the play. The introduction is by Albee, in which he writes, "I cannot conceive of anyone wanting to buy [this] massive album; but ... every playwright wants as much permanence for his work as he can get."

The recording was issued in both stereo (DOS 687) and monaural (DOL 287) formats. It was out of print for many years, was not released in other formats, and is highly prized among collectors, as a play with such adult themes had never been recorded for the general public before. It was finally re-released in 2014 by Masterworks Broadway.[15]

In 1970, Henry Fonda and Richard Burton attempted to recruit Warren Beatty and Jon Voight for an all-male production, but Albee refused permission.[16]

Colleen Dewhurst and Ben Gazzara starred in a 1976 Broadway revival.

Mike Nichols and Elaine May starred in a 1980 production in New Haven.

Diana Rigg and David Suchet starred in a 1996 production of the play at the Almeida Theatre in London before transferring to the Aldwych Theatre in London's West End in 1997.

Patrick Stewart and Mercedes Ruehl starred in a 2000–2001 production at The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

The play was revived on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre, opening on 12 March 2005, in previews and closing on 4 September 2005, after 8 previews and 177 performances. Directed by Anthony Page, it starred Kathleen Turner as Martha and Bill Irwin as George, with Mireille Enos as Honey and David Harbour as Nick. Irwin won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play for his role.[17] The production transferred to London's West End at the Apollo Theatre with the entire original cast, running from 31 January to 13 May 2006.[18] In January 2007, the production played at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, for one month. On 6 February 2007, the production began a six-week run at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles.

Notably, it was this 2005 production that led to the publication of a revised script – one that has been used ever since – although many of its revisions were introduced in earlier productions. Among the revisions was the removal of early references to George and Martha's child, as well as the reference to the fact that George felt that he helped cause his parents' death, which was originally the subject of his failed novel. A roughly 7 page scene with George and Honey at the end of Act II has also been removed completely. These and other changes seem to be there to clarify plot points, but arguably rob the play of some of its ambiguity and tenuous relationship with realism.

The play toured in the US and played in San Francisco at the Golden Gate Theatre from 11 April – 12 May 2007.

On 12 December 2010, the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago began performances of the play featuring Amy Morton as Martha, Tracy Letts (the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of August: Osage County)[19] as George, Carrie Coon, and Madison Dirks. The production was directed by Pam MacKinnon, who previously directed the premieres of Albee's Peter and Jerry and Occupant. This production began previews on Broadway at the Booth Theatre on 27 September 2012, opening on 13 October, 50 years after the original Broadway opening.[20][21] MacKinnon again directed, with the Steppenwolf cast reprising their roles. The production and cast received praise in The New York Times from reviewer Charles Isherwood.[22] Letts won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play.[23]

Meg Tilly returned to acting in 2011 to play Martha in a production by Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre.[24][25] The show ran from 5 July – 17 July 2011, in Victoria, British Columbia.

On 21 February 2017, a production directed by James Macdonald began at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London, featuring Imelda Staunton, Conleth Hill, Imogen Poots, and Luke Treadaway.[26][27] It ran until 27 May 2017.

A Broadway revival was scheduled to premiere on 9 April 2020, in a production directed by Joe Mantello and produced by Scott Rudin. It was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic after 9 preview performances, without officially opening.[28] It starred Laurie Metcalf, Rupert Everett, Russell Tovey, and Patsy Ferran.[29] Eddie Izzard had been set to play George, but it was announced on 11 September 2019, that Everett would replace her.[30]

In 1995 and 1996, the Canadian One Yellow Rabbit troupe mounted a homage in dance to Albee, Permission, in the form of an hourlong ballet inspired by Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It was performed in Calgary, Toronto, Phoenix, Guadalajara, and Mexico City.[31]

The film was given a "Deluxe Edition Two-Record Set" soundtrack album release in 1967 by Warner Bros. Records, and was the first film to have its vocals be released in their entirety on an album, as the film at that time could not be shown on network television. It contains the vocals of the four actors performing in the film. The only music on the album is a song, "Virginia Woolf Rock", that plays while Martha and Nick are dancing (but plays a little differently than it does in the film).

In at least two instances alternative takes were used: Taylor's memorable "Goddamn you!" line is restored to "Screw you!", and some of the dialogue from the dancing sequence was lifted from another take. As Martha tells Nick and Honey her story about punching George in the stomach in front of her father, it is heard very clearly while in the film it becomes muffled as the camera follows George into another room to get a gun. The album also runs half an hour shorter than the film, since most pauses and long silences were removed, but virtually every line remains intact. The album's cover has the four main actors and the back cover has some background information about them, the five-month shooting schedule, and Albee, and a brief synopsis of the film.