Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
However, I had never had a chance to see it performed. In high school, I repeatedly checked out the paperback version of the play from the Ringwood, New Jersey public library. Somewhere along the line I saw the occasionally brilliant but oddly structured film version by Mike Nichols (Albee, who did not write the screenplay, notes that the only addition was a line "Let's go to the roadhouse," for which the screenwriter earned millions of dollars).
But the Steppenwolf Theater of Chicago has shown great timing. They have brought their production, directed by Pam McKinnon with Albee's blessing (he recorded the announcement asking the audience to turn off their cell phones) to the Booth Theater on Broadway. It will open officially on the same day fifty years later, but I saw a preview last night.
"George and Martha; sad, sad, sad," is a line repeated throughout the action. There are many other repeated words and phrases that ping with alacrity: "Historical inevitably," "Snap!" "Flop," and "Plowing pertinent wives." The play as written in 1962 shocked audiences with its frank sexuality and vicious dialogue. Albee has apparently taken the opportunity to make things contemporary by adding a few F-bombs and a "motherfucker." But specific words don't shock anymore; what still shocks is the fierce emotion of the action.
George and Martha, not coincidentally named after America's first couple, are a middle-aged couple. He is a professor of history at a small New England college. He is 46 but looks older. She is six years older, a braying, vulgar alcoholic, and also the daughter of the college's president. "There are easier things," George says, "than being married to the daughter of the president of the college where you teach."
After a faculty party, they are visited by a younger faculty member, Nick, who teaches biology. His wife is a slim-hipped, mousy woman called Honey, who is already tipsy but proceeds to get plastered on brandy. All of the cast drink constantly--they make the ad men on Mad Men look like pikers. Perhaps someone could total up all the drinks consumed over the course of the evening--one would need an abacus.
While giving Honey a tour of the house, Martha mentions her and George's son, which angers George. She also humiliates him, by telling their guests that he is a "flop," a disappointment who is only "in the history department," he doesn't run the history department. Nick joins in the merriment, and George lashes back. He says they have played the game "Humiliate the Host," now it's time to play "Get the Guests." He then reveals to Honey a story Nick told him about her hysterical pregnancy.
More games, vicious in nature, will be played. In Act II "Hump the Hostess" takes place, when Martha seduces Nick right in front of George, who feigns indifference. But he hatches a game called "Bringing Up Baby," in which he will confront Martha about the nature of their son.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is three-plus hours of "total war." We get the impression that George and Martha have a miserable relationship; she tells George "If you existed I'd divorce you." But over the course of the play, and as we learn about their son, we see that they need each other desperately. They are both the driftwood that each clings to after the shipwreck. Nick and Honey, perhaps younger versions of them, are forced to peer into the void, and what they see is disturbing, especially when the fireworks turns to physical assault.
The play is scathingly funny, but also tragic in its plumbing of the depths of the human mind. George is threatened by Nick, who as a biologist George thinks is fiddling with human chromosomes, so everyone will one day be alike. George knows history, he repeats often, but wonders whether humans learn anything from history.
As for this production, I found it to be mostly excellent. The set, strewn with books, photos and bric-a-brac (a nice touch is the evidence of missing pictures on the stairwell) is well done by Todd Rosenthal. The direction by McKinnon is touch and go--I thought some of the second act dragged, but the third act is scintillating, edge-of-your-set viewing.
The actors are all good, though some more than others. Tracy Letts, the playwright of August: Osage County, which certainly owes a debt to this play, makes an excellent George. I did think he sounded amazingly like John Lithgow, but he inhabited the part of a man whom Nick thinks is spineless, but has hidden reserves of strength, and also of cruelty. Amy Morton is Martha, and it's hard not to compare her to Elizabeth Taylor, who won an Oscar for the film role. Morton is more of an Earth mother, stalking around barefoot in Act III like some proto-hippie.
The younger couple has mixed results. I loved Carrie Coon as Honey, which is easily reduced to one-note--she's a "simp," and she's drunk. There has to be more to her than that, though, more than just the wild dance she does in her stocking feet. Coon shows the complexity of Honey, and when George reveals her secret her pain is evident. As Nick, I found Madison Dirks bland, but the role calls for a certain colorness. He's a good-looking stud, and no match for the verbal pyrotechnics of George and Martha, but Dirks might have given the role a little sharper edge than what he did.
Leaving the theater you may have a vicarious hangover. The play takes place from 2 a.m. to dawn, with constant imbibing. It can give you that pain-behind-your-eyes feeling of staying up too late, but having to keep yourself awake and alert, struggling for words. As the characters throw around their one-liners and speeches, several of which are beautiful to behold, they come from a place that is not obstructed by alcohol, and may be amplified by it.
The title, repeated in each act, is a pun on the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf," and was first seen by Albee scrawled on a mirror in men's room in a bar. He made the literary gag into a metaphor for fear in general; as the play ends, George croons the tune softly, and Martha responds to the question of the song, "I am, George, I am."
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