Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee's first full-length play and his first to appear on Broadway, is considered by many to be his greatest dramatic achievement, as well as a central work in the contemporary American theatre. Virginia Woolf focuses on an embittered academic couple who gradually draw a younger couple, freshly arrived from the Midwest, into their vicious games of mantal love-hatred. The play is a dramatic bloodsport fought with words rather than weapons"verbal fencing," wrote Ruby Cohn m Edward Albee, "in the most adroit dialogue ever heard on the American stage." The play premiered October 13, 1962; at New York's Billy Rose Theatre and starred, in the roles of the battling husband and wife, Arthur Hill as George and Uta Hagen as Martha. The acclaimed production ran for 664 performances and led almost immediately to other successful productions throughout the United States and the world; the play has continued to be revived frequently.
Virginia Woolf garnered an impressive collection of awards, including the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Foreign Press Association Award, two Antoinette Perry ("Tony") Awards, the Variety Drama Critics' Poll Award, and the Evening Standard Award. For the play, Albee was additionally selected as the most promising playwright of the 1962-63 Broadway season by the New York Drama Critics' organization. When Albee did not receive the Pulitzer Prize for his widely-acclaimed play because one of the trustees objected to its sexual subject matter, drama advisors John Gassner and John Mason Brown publicly resigned from the jury in protest.
History professor and wtiter, pretends that his marriage was a compromise, but they love each other. What did he lose? He thinks that he lost. They both know the truth.
and the title! POMO!
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), a famous and shocking black comedy, was based on Edward Albee's scandalous play (Ernest Lehman's screenplay left the dialogue of the play virtually intact). It was first performed in New York in October of 1962, and it captured the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Tony Award for the 1962-3 season. (DVD)
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1995 Film Score Re-recording) [SOUNDTRACK]
Alex North, National Philharmonic Orchestra, Jerry Goldsmith B00000150X
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) [ 0 ]
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton * Director: Mike Nichols 0790732254
2007 - Stoppard (60s, the generation)
...
Notes
George: Just don't start in on the bit about the kid, that's all.
Martha: What do you take me for?
George: Much too much.
Martha: Yeah? Well I'll start in on the kid if I want to.
Martha: Just leave the kid out of this.
George: I'd advise against it, Martha.
[ http://www.filmsite.org/whos.html ]
Notes are lost...
George - A 46-year-old member of the history department at New Carthage University. George is married to Martha, in a once loving relationship now defined by sarcasm and frequent acrimony. Martha - Martha is the 52-year-old daughter of the president of New Carthage University. She is married to George, though disappointed with his aborted academic career. She attempts to have an affair with Nick.Nick - Nick has just become a new member of the biology faculty at New Carthage University. He is 28 years old, good-looking, Midwestern, and clean-cut. He is married to Honey.Honey - Honey is the petite wife of Nick. She is 26 years old, has a weak stomach, and is not the brightest bulb of the bunch.
Full of ideals, well-mannered, apparently happy young married couple is invited for dinner by a little older couple, dissapointed with their life and their relationships. Collision of such different couples awakes anxieties, mutual accusations, "skeletons in the cupboards" which were sleeping so far. Dinner changes into the night full of accusations, memories, collective psychodrama. Contemporary, lively text about the complications of relations in marriage.
E.F.Albee - American drama writer, the child of unknown parents. Adopted by theatre entrepreneur; a powerful American Vaudeville producer, he was hawing constant contact with the world of the theatre. This most important dramas are: "The Zoo story " (1959), The American Dream (1960), "Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?" which brought him international fame is regarded to be the best of his plays.
At the age of twenty, Albee moved to New York's Greenwich Village where he held a variety of odd jobs including office boy, record salesman, and messenger for Western Union before finally hitting it big with his 1959 play, The Zoo Story. Originally produced in Berlin where it shared the bill with Samuel Beckett`s Krapp's Last Tape, The Zoo Story told the story of a drifter who acts out his own murder with the unwitting aid of an upper-middle-class editor. Along with other early works such as The Sandbox (1959) and The American Dream (1960), The Zoo Story effectively gave birth to American absurdist drama. Albee was hailed as the leader of a new theatrical movement and labeled as the successor to Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Eugene O`Neill, however, probably more closely related to the likes of such European playwrights as Beckett and Harold Pinter.
Although they may seem at first glance to be realistic, the surreal nature of Albee's plays is never far from the surface. In A Delicate Balance (1966), for example, Harry and Edna carry a mysterious psychic plague into their best friends' living room, and George and Martha's child in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) turns out to be nothing more than a figment of their combined imagination, a pawn invented for use in their twisted, psychological games. In Three Tall Women (1994), separate characters on stage in the first act turn out to be, in the second act, the same character at different stages of her life.
Albee describes his work as "an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen." Although he suffered through a decade of plays that refused to yield a commercial hit in the 1980's, Albee experienced a stunning success with Three Tall Women (1994) which won him his third Pulitzer Prize as well as Best Play awards from the New York Drama Critics Circle and Outer Critics Circle. He had previously won Pulitzers for A Delicate Balance (1966) and Seascape (1975). Other awards include an Obie Award (1960) and a Tony Award (1964).
Summary
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
by Edward Albee -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature :
Play in three acts by Edward Albee, published and produced in 1962. The action takes place in the living room of a middle-aged couple, George and Martha, who have come home from a faculty party drunk and quarrelsome. When Nick, a young biology professor, and his strange wife Honey stop by for a nightcap, they are enlisted as fellow fighters, and the battle begins. A long night of malicious games, insults, humiliations, betrayals, painful confrontations, and savage witticisms ensues. The secrets of both couples are laid bare and illusions are viciously exposed. When, in a climactic moment, George decides to "kill" the son they have invented to compensate for their childlessness, George and Martha finally face the truth and, in a quiet ending to a noisy play, stand together against the world, sharing their sorrow.
242 pages * Publisher: Signet Book; Reissue edition (August 1, 1988)
ISBN: 0451158717
Martha: George's biggest problem about the little...about our son, about our great big son, is that deep down in the private-most pit of his gut, he's not completely sure that it's his own kid.
George: My God, you're a wicked woman.
Martha: And I've told you a million times, baby...I wouldn't conceive with anyone else, you know that baby.
George: A deeply wicked person.
Honey (grieving and drunk): Oh my, my, my, my, my...
Nick: I'm not sure that this is a subject for...
George: Martha's lying. I want you to know that right now. Martha is lying. There are very few things that I am certain of anymore, but the one thing, the one thing in this whole sinking world that I am sure of is my partnership, my chromosomological partnership in the...creation of our...blond-eyed, blue-haired...son...
Martha: ...George, our son does not have blue hair or blue eyes, for that matter. He has green eyes, like me. Beautiful, beautiful green eyes.
Contents
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Key Literary Elements
Setting
Characters
Conflict
Plot
Themes
Mood
Background Information
Literary/Historical Information
Section summaries with Notes
Act I - Fun and Games
Act Two - Walpurgisnacht
Act Three - The Exorcism
Overall Analyses
Characters
Plot
Themes
Other Elements
Imagery and Symbolism
Questions
Study Questions
Select Bibliography
Comment
Comment on the Study of Literature
http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmWhosAfraid02.asp
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Play in three acts by Edward Albee, published and produced in 1962. The action takes place in the living room of a middle-aged couple, George and Martha, who have come home from a faculty party drunk and quarrelsome. When Nick, a young biology professor, and his strange wife Honey stop by for a nightcap, they are enlisted as fellow fighters, and the battle begins. A long night of malicious games, insults, humiliations, betrayals, painful confrontations, and savage witticisms ensues. The secrets of both couples are laid bare and illusions are viciously exposed. When, in a climactic moment, George decides to "kill" the son they have invented to compensate for their childlessness, George and Martha finally face the truth and, in a quiet ending to a noisy play, stand together against the world, sharing their sorrow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who's_Afraid_of_Virginia_Woolf [comments?]
