Directed by Mike Nichols.
Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
In a Nutshell: Two married couples meet for drinks and expose marital secrets.
Adapted from the Tony Award winning play by Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is gold standard in black comedy. It is a barrage of marital hatred, tenderness, victimization, and whatever is left in the emotional gamut. The plot is two couples; George and Martha (Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor) and Nick and Honey (George Segal and Sandy Dennis) with George and Nick professors at the same university. George and Martha are middle-aged, unaccomplished, and stuck in a routine of one-upmanship and hateful verbal sparring. Nick and Honey have far less contempt for each other, but realize through George and Martha’s union just how unstable their rock is. As the two couples unite one night for drinks, the true nature of the two marriages unfurls in a fury of emotional wounding and booze-soaked tirades. The title comes from a poor joke repeated past its expiration date, a fair metaphor for the film’s comedic sensibilities. Though according to Albee, it relates to the fear of living without false illusions, a fear that defines the lives of George and Martha.
Adapted from the Tony Award winning play by Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is gold standard in black comedy. It is a barrage of marital hatred, tenderness, victimization, and whatever is left in the emotional gamut. The plot is two couples; George and Martha (Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor) and Nick and Honey (George Segal and Sandy Dennis) with George and Nick professors at the same university. George and Martha are middle-aged, unaccomplished, and stuck in a routine of one-upmanship and hateful verbal sparring. Nick and Honey have far less contempt for each other, but realize through George and Martha’s union just how unstable their rock is. As the two couples unite one night for drinks, the true nature of the two marriages unfurls in a fury of emotional wounding and booze-soaked tirades. The title comes from a poor joke repeated past its expiration date, a fair metaphor for the film’s comedic sensibilities. Though according to Albee, it relates to the fear of living without false illusions, a fear that defines the lives of George and Martha.
Mike Nichols (making his directorial debut) has the right sense to stick to the sharpened, wounding (and very adult) dialogue and claustrophobic scenery; the later credited to cinematographer Haskell Wexler transforming the suburban home into a cavernous lair into Hell. The casting of matinee couple Taylor and Burton caused the most publicity, but both display not a shred of star vanity. Taylor’s alcoholic is a matron Godzilla and the bully of the foursome; loud and cruel to safeguard her own demons. Burton is far quieter, but a slight vocal inflection or wincing look gives us all the insight we need. Segal has the least showy role, but is apt as the audience proxy while Dennis explodes from reserved housewife to childish drunk under George and Martha’s tutelage.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is unforgiving, but would not be as cutting if it did not provide some resonance. Both George and Martha have holed up in their routine of put-downs and incessant wrath, but it is that empty desire of one-upmanship that has kept together for this long. Their sudden friendship with the naïve Nick and immature Honey is only an extension of that self-superiority. I shall not reveal George and Martha’s damning marital secret, but it can be seen as an empty cipher to imprint their pains and struggles while exercising their desire to control (for so much of George and Martha’s ambitions have been lost in weakness). George and Martha are ugliness amplified, but like the film, do not seek to merely terrorize.
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