we are married now ..... the end of romance

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee that opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater on October 13, 1962. The original cast featured Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider. Subsequent cast members included Henderson Forsythe, Eileen Fulton, Mercedes McCambridge and Arthur Hill.
In the play, Martha and George, a bitter erudite couple, invite a new professor and his wife to their house after a party. There they continue drinking and engage in relentless, scathing verbal and sometimes physical abuse in front of them. Martha is the daughter of the president of the university where George works as a history professor. Nick is a biology professor (who Martha insists teaches math) and Honey is his mousy, brandy-abusing wife.
The title is a parody of the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" from Disney's animated version of The Three Little Pigs; it is revealed in the first few moments of the play that Martha coined the phrase earlier on in the evening at a party. Martha and George repeatedly needle each other over whether either one of them found it funny. The reference to Virginia Woolf as nothing more than a meaningless pun may reflect something of the tone of the play, combining a reference to high culture with banal, immature schoolyard cruelty. The childish nature of this phrase reflects George and Martha's repeated game playing throughout the play. In interviews, Albee has said that he asked Woolf's widower Leonard Woolf for permission to use her name in the title of the play.
Nick and Honey are simultaneously fascinated and embarrassed, and stay even though the abuse turns periodically towards them as well.
Contents[hide]
1 Plot summary
1.1 "Humiliate the Host"
1.2 "Get the Guests"
1.3 "Bringing Up Baby"
2 2004-2006 Production
3 Film
4 Trivia
5 External links
6 Reviews
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Plot summary
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
There are many darker veins running through the play's dialogue which suggest that the border between fiction and reality is continually challenged.
The play involves the two couples playing "games," which are savage verbal attacks against one or two of the others at the party. These games are referred to with sarcastically alliterative names, "Humiliate the Host", "Get the Guests", and so on.
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"Humiliate the Host"
Martha, in the first act, "Fun and Games", taunts George. She stresses his failures in an almost brutal fashion, even after George reacts violently:
Martha: ...In fact, he was sort of a ... a FLOP! A great...big...FLOP!
[CRASH! Immediately after FLOP! George breaks a bottle against the portable bar...]
George [almost crying]: I said stop, Martha.
Martha: I hope that was an empty bottle, George. You don't want to waste good liquor...not on your salary.
In act two, "Walpurgisnacht", Nick and George are alone. Nick talks about his wife and her hysterical pregnancy:
George [to Nick]: While she was up, you married her.
Nick: And then she went down.
George tells Nick a story about a boy who accidentally shot and killed his mother. Later, this boy was driving in the countryside with his father, who "swerved the car, to avoid a porcupine, and drove straight into a large tree...when they told him that his father was dead...he was put in an asylum." (References to this story occur later in the play.)
Once the men are rejoined by their wives, Martha begins to describe a novel that George wrote recently: "A novel about a naughty boychild...who killed his mother and his father dead." Martha continues: "Georgie said...but Sir, it isn't a novel at all...this really happened...TO ME!" At this time, George and Martha begin to physically fight one another and George grabs Martha by the throat. In his stage direction, Albee suggests that Nick may be making a connection between the "novel" and the story George had told him earlier.
Nick [remembering something related]: Hey...wait a minute...
Is George the boy who "killed his mother and his father dead"? If so, was he lying to Nick about the asylum or is the "asylum" something metaphorical? Is Martha lying about the novel, or is something else afoot? The truth is not evident. This brutal event concludes the game of "Humiliate the Host."
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"Get the Guests"
George is quick to retort in the next game, "Get the Guests." While Nick and George were talking earlier, Nick related the story of his and Honey's marriage. Honey, now thoroughly drunk, does not realize that George's story about "the Mousie", who "tooted brandy immodestly and spent half of her time in the upchuck", is about her and her hysterical pregnancy. She feels as if she is about to be sick and runs to the bathroom.
At the end of this act, Martha starts to seduce Nick blatantly in front of George. George does not react and sits calmly, reading a book:
Martha: ...I said I was necking with one of the guests...
George: Yes, good...good for you. Which one?
Martha: Oh, I see what you're up to, you lousy little...
George: I'm up to page a hundred and...
At the end of the act, Honey comes out, hearing Martha and Nick brush against the doorchimes, wondering who rang. This gives George an idea, and leads into the next, crucial act of the play.
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"Bringing Up Baby"
In the third act, Martha appears alone on the stage, speaking in soliloquy. Nick joins her after a while, recalling Honey in the bathroom winking at him. The doorbell rings: It is George, with a bunch of snapdragons in his hand, calling out, "Flores para los muertos" (flowers for the dead, in a reference to A Streetcar Named Desire). Martha and George argue about whether the moon is up or down: George insists it is up while Martha says she saw no moon from the bedroom. George then goes on to say how once, when he was in the Mediterranean, the moon went down and came up again. Nick asks whether this incident occurred after George killed his parents:
George [defiantly]: Maybe.
Martha: Yeah; maybe not, too.
...
George [to Nick]: Truth and illusion. Who knows the difference...?
George asks Nick to bring his wife back out for the final game, "Bringing Up Baby." George and Martha supposedly have a son, about whom George has repeatedly instructed Martha to keep quiet. George now begins to talk about this son - "Martha...climbing all over the poor bastard, trying to break the bathroom door down to wash him in the tub when he's sixteen." Then George prompts Martha for her "recitation", in which they describe their son's upbringing in an almost duet-like fashion:
Martha: It was an easy birth...
George: Oh, Martha; no. You laboured...how you laboured.
Martha: It was an easy birth...once it had been...accepted, relaxed into.
As this tale progresses, George begins to recite sections of the Dies Irae (part of the Requiem, the Latin mass for the dead), and in the end:
George: Martha...our son is...dead.
[Silence.]
He was...killed...late in the afternoon...
[Silence.]
[A tiny chuckle] on a country road, with his learner's permit in his pocket, he swerved, to avoid a porcupine, and drove straight into a ...
Martha [rigid fury]: YOU...CAN'T...DO...THAT!
Supposing their son had been real, what had George done to prompt this response from Martha? The circumstances of their son's death were touched on earlier in the play in a different context.
George and Martha have created their son; he does not exist as George and Martha could not have children. George says that he "killed" their son because Martha broke their rule that she could not speak of their son to others. The play ends with George singing, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" to Martha, whereupon she replies, "I am, George... I am".
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2004-2006 Production
Starting in 2004, and continuing into 2005, there was a new Broadway production of the play. The production was directed by Anthony Page and starred Kathleen Turner as Martha and Bill Irwin as George. Irwin won the 2005 Tony award for Best Actor for his role. The production was transferred to London's West End with the entire original cast, and as of March 2006 is playing at the Apollo Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue.
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Film
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Directed by
Mike Nichols
Produced by
Ernest Lehman
Written by
Edward Albee (play)Ernest Lehman
Starring
Elizabeth TaylorRichard Burton
Distributed by
Warner Bros.
Release date
June 21, 1966 (USA premiere)
Running time
131 min.
Language
English
IMDb profile
A film adaptation of the play was released in 1966. It was directed by Mike Nichols which starred Elizabeth Taylor as Martha and Richard Burton as George. The film version differs slightly from the play. The play features only the four characters listed above, while in the film there were two other minor characters - the host of a roadhouse who appears briefly and says a few lines, and his wife, who serves a tray of drinks and leaves silently. (They were played by the film's gaffer, Frank Flanagan, and his wife.)
In the play, each scene takes place entirely in Martha and George's house. In the film, one scene takes place at the roadhouse, one in George and Martha's yard, and one in their car. Despite these minor variatons, however, the film is extremely faithful to the play. The filmmakers used the original play as the screenplay and, aside from toning down some of the profanity a slight bit -- Martha's "screw you!" becomes "damn you!" -- virtually all of the original dialogue remains intact.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the film version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", 1966
Each of the four main actors was nominated for an Oscar but only Taylor and Sandy Dennis (Honey) won for Best Actress and Supporting Actress, respectively. The film also won for Black and White Cinematography for Haskell Wexler's stark, black and white camera work (it was the last film to win before the category was eliminated). It has usually been listed on the top 250 films list at the Internet Movie Database.
The film was considered groundbreaking for having a level of profanity and sexual implication unheard of at that time. Jack Valenti, who had taken office as president of the MPAA in 1966, had just abolished the old Breen Office Code. In order for the film to be released with the MPAA approval, Warner Brothers agreed to minor deletions of certain profanities and to have a special warning placed on all advertisement indicating adult content in the film. It was this film and another groundbreaking film, Blowup (1966), that led Jack Valenti to begin work on the MPAA film rating system that went into effect on November 1, 1968.
The choice of Taylor – at the time regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world – to play the frumpy, fifty-ish Martha surprised many, but the actress gained thirty pounds for the role, and her performance (along with those of Burton, Segal and Dennis) was ultimately praised. According to Edward Albee, he had been told that Bette Davis and James Mason were going to play "Martha" and "George" — in the script, Martha references Davis and quotes her famous "What a dump!" line from the film Beyond the Forest (1949) — and was surprised by the Burton/Taylor casting, but stated that Taylor was quite good, and Burton was incredible.
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Trivia
Because of the dark, unflattering glimpse of heterosexual married life, many critics at the time suggested the play was a thinly veiled portrait of two gay male couples. Albee (who himself is openly gay) has adamantly denied this, stating to a number of interviewers over the years, "If I'd wanted to write a play about two gay couples, I would have done so." Albee has refused permission to theater companies to cast all four roles with men, saying this would distort the play's meaning.
The only film (so far) in Academy history to be nominated in every eligible category (13 eligible categories/13 nominations: picture, actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress, director, adapted screenplay, art direction/set decoration (b&w), cinematography (b&w), sound, costume design (b&w), music score, film editing).
Nick is never addressed or introduced by name. (Viewers would not know the character's name, were it not cited in the credits.) He is, however the recipient of a number of derogatory and/or unflattering nicknames from George (e.g. "stud", "houseboy", "blondie").
Indiana band Murder by Death have a song entitled I'm Afraid of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on their first album, Like the Exorcist, but More Breakdancing.
Mad Magazine did a sendup of the movie, titled Who in Heck is Virginia Woolf?! At one point, it is remarked "This is an art film, so the censors have to let us talk dirty!" Most of the swearing is replaced with dingbats; when Martha asks George "%$?" and he replies "What kind of profanity is that?!", she says "I was just asking what percentage of the gross we're (Taylor and Burton) getting!" Their son turns out to be real... and a clean-cut, non-dysfunctional bore.
The movie version was spoofed on The Benny Hill Show, with Hill playing both Burton's and Taylor's parts.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is poet Charles Bukowski's favorite film.
A 1990s stage revival of the play starred John Lithgow. Though the actors were praised for their performances, the timeliness of the staging was questioned in reviews.
Edward Albee has mentioned, in interviews, that he garnered the name of the play off of a message he saw scrawled in a bathroom of a bar.
The movie/play was spoofed on the Seth McFarlane cartoon comedy, American Dad, in the episode "Camp Refugee," with Roger the alien playing George's part and Francine playing Martha's part.