“…Virginia Woolf?”…it’s hell on earth
bergin makes it worse…
Play review:
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
A 1962 play by Edward Albee
New York: Scribner Classics, 1962, 2003
243 pages
It’s not a feel-good play.
After you start to move again after you finish reading it, probably you’ll end up thinking that your life is better than you thought it was. George and Martha do a pretty good job of proving that hell on earth is possible.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is almost a non-stop exaltation of how to be mean, sad, vicious, heartbroken, desperate, delirious, murderous, inhibited, ignorant, ambitious, empty, and longing, more or less all at the same time.
George and Martha, an aging couple on a rundown college campus, stage their terrible show for the benefit of a young professor, Nick, and his young wife, Honey, in the wee hours of a morning when each of them has something better to do, but isn’t doing it.
None of them make you think of the Cleaver family.
Arthur Hill was George and Uta Hagen was Martha in the first stage presentation in October 1962.
In the 1966 film version, Richard Burton was George and Elizabeth Taylor was Martha.
Both productions are slam bang downers, just like the play.
No production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? will make you think of the Cleavers.
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Play review. Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
click here
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
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