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**4.5 stars**

“Like the moon shining bright
Up high with all its grace,
I can only show you at night
And hide half of my face.��
�� Ana Claudia Antunes, (Pierrot & Columbine)

“Like European Absurdists, Albee has tried to dramatize the reality of man’s condition, but whereas Sartre, Camus, Beckett, Genet, Ionesco, and Pinter present reality in all its logical absurdity, Albee has been preoccupied with illusions that screen man from reality.��

I bought this one at a thrift store back at a time when I hadn't read any of Virginia Woolf, so the title took me unguarded and the book resided on my shelf for too long. I then read Her and brought up the courage to read this. The play is disappointing in that aspect. You don't need to read Her to devour this one. Albee initially had thought of the title to be ��The Exorcism�� (the title later assigned to Act 3) but arrived at ��Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?�� after discovering the phrase as graffiti in a Greenwich Village bar. Albee has explicated his title with its reference to the wordsmith centrally concerned with the nature of reality, to mean �� Who is afraid of facing life without illusions? ��

Disappointed as I was, it was a pretty amazing read in itself. Asked to describe his work in progress that would become ��Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?��, Edward Albee claimed his work to be a ��sort of grotesque comedy�� concerning(view spoiler)[ ��the exorcism of a non-existent child�� (hide spoiler)] that deals with ��the substitution of artificial for real values in this society of ours.�� That does sound quite a mouthful, but really is drastically appropriate.

“Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.��

There are two dysfunctional families in the play, a total of four characters: For me, two are absolutely disgusting, one demands sympathy but doesn't deserve it, and one probably will remind you at times of the irksome element which is present in every family tale. The similarity of the families is they reciprocate the roles in a love-hate relationship. The contradiction is that while the older one interacts acerbically amongst themselves while in others' company and a bit warmly when left alone, (probably) the process is reversed for the other couple. The second one, (or so the play suggests) gets unknowingly involved with the previous one in a Game. A harrowing, dark one.

“You want to dance with me, angel tits?��

The storyline feels way too modern, for something being written in the backdrop of the 60s. The four characters here constitute a miniature society, and everything that happens in the play is way too relevant in the present time. Complaints of increasingly frightening feelings of self-estrangement and depersonalization are very frequently voiced by the individuals entrapped in collusion. That happened back at that time, and that happens even now. I don't reckon it won't make much of a movie if the speech is garbled, for the complementary (Watzlawick) conversation is the best part of this play. Strangely depressing and diminishing in parts, but yet, probably for the best.

Anything more will act as a spoiler. So read this book. It is way too dark for a play, just hope you are not deceived.

“You don't see anything, do you? You see everything but the goddamn mind; you see all the little specs and crap, but you don't see what goes on, do you?��