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George: Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Martha: I am, George. I am.

Martha: Truth or illusion, George; you don't know the difference.
George: No, but we must carry on as though we did.
Martha: Amen.

The fiftieth anniversary production of the play, which is one of the greatest plays ever written, a masterpiece of the theater.



The story of an important night in the lives of two academic couples, George and Martha, older, and Nick and Honey, new to the small college. Their meeting takes place after a drunken faculty party, very late, and goes on all night til dawn. The showcase here is the older couple, who treat each other both viciously and amusingly. They use language to maim each other, but also to amuse each other. They invent “games� such as Get the Guest or Hump the Host, through which they hurt each other, but also hurt their guests. But do they love each other? Can they heal?

And alcohol is present on every page, they never stop drinking:

�. . . we cry, and we take our tears, and we put 'em in the ice box, in the goddamn ice trays until they're all frozen and then. . . we put them. . . in our. . . drinks.�

So it all appears initially to be uselessly mean, cleverly drunken chatter, but there’s a method in the madness, to get beneath the small talk to the meaning of life, what they need to keep their relationships alive and thriving: To do away with surface chatter and really live and love each other. To shatter the illusions through which they have been living. If possible.

Honey: (Apologetically, holding up her brandy bottle) I peel labels.
George: We all peel labels, sweetie; and when you get through the skin, all three layers, through the muscle, slosh aside the organs (An aside to Nick), them which is still sloshable--(Back to Honey) and get down to bone. . . you know what you do then?
Honey: (Terribly interested) No!
George: When you get down to bone, you haven't got all the way, yet. There's something inside the bone. . . the marrow. . . and that's what you gotta get at. (A strange smile at Martha)

Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? They all are, and we all are. And to not be afraid? How do we achieve that? For that, George and Martha in particular, though Nick and Honey, too, need a Walpurgisnacht, a kind of blood-letting and a violent tearing away of illusions to get to the core of their relationship. And this is the very night when it all goes down, and it isn’t always fun, it can be brutally painful, but it can also be exhilarating theater. Here’s one moment of recognition and clarity for Martha:

"George, who is out somewhere there in the dark, who is good to me - whom I revile, who can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I can change them. Who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy. And yes, I do wish to be happy. George and Martha: Sad, sad, sad. Whom I will not forgive for having come to rest; for having seen me and having said: ‘Yes, this will do�. Who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving. . . me, and must be punished for it. George and Martha. . . Sad, sad, sad."

A kind of symbol for both couples of the illusions they need to face down is the mention of a (non-existent?) child, powerfully and almost surreally, tragicomically, present throughout. There was nothing quite like it in theater before it, and many were since influenced by it, by Albee. I recommend your seeing a production, of course, including the great Academy Award-winning film with Richard Burton, Liz Taylor (who, having been married and divorced three times understood epic marital conflict), George Segal and Sandy Dennis, which I saw again in awe.