Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). The emotionally draining film revolves around a young couple, Nick (played by Segal) and Honey (Dennis), who are invited for drinks at the home of henpecked professor George (Burton) and his vulgar, sexually aggressive wife, Martha (Taylor).
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was the summit of the professional team of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Playing against type, Elizabeth Taylor got her second Oscar the one she felt she earned. She always disparaged the one received for Butterfield 8 as it came on the heels of her well publicized pneumonia bout.
The play's title, which alludes to the English novelist Virginia Woolf, is also a reference to the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" from Walt Disney 's animated version of The Three Little Pigs.
The play's title, which alludes to the English novelist Virginia Woolf, is also a reference to the song " Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? " from Walt Disney 's animated version of The Three Little Pigs. Because the rights to the Disney song are expensive, most stage versions, and the film, have Martha sing to the tune of " Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush ", a melody that fits the meter fairly well and is in the public domain. In the first few moments of the play, it is revealed that someone sang the song earlier in the evening at a party, although who first sang it (Martha or some other anonymous party guest) remains unclear. Martha repeatedly needles George over whether he found it funny.
George and Martha engage in dangerous emotional games. George is an associate professor of history and Martha is the daughter of the president of the college where George teaches. After they return home from a faculty party, Martha reveals she has invited a young married couple she met at the party over for a drink. The guests arrive—Nick, a biology professor (who Martha thinks teaches math), and his wife, Honey. As the four drink, Martha and George engage in scathing verbal abuse of each other in front of Nick and Honey. The younger couple is first embarrassed and later enmeshed. They stay.
Christopher Bigsby asserts that this play opposes the idea of a perfect American family and societal expectations as it "attacks the false optimism and myopic confidence of modern society". Albee takes a heavy-handed approach to displaying this contrast, making examples of every character and their expectations of the people around them. Societal norms of the 1950s consisted of a nuclear family, two parents and two (or more) children. This conception was picturesque in the idea that the father was the breadwinner, the mother a housewife, and the children well-behaved.
Traditionally, " Walpurgisnacht " is the name of an annual witches' meeting (satiric in the context of the play). Nick and George are sitting outside. As they talk about their wives, Nick says Honey had a " hysterical pregnancy ". George tells Nick about a time he went to a gin mill with some boarding school classmates, one of whom had accidentally killed his mother by shooting her. This friend was laughed at for ordering "bergin". The following summer, the friend accidentally killed his father while driving, was committed to an asylum, and never spoke again. George and Nick discuss the possibility of having children and eventually argue and insult each other. After they rejoin the women in the house, Martha and Nick dance suggestively. Martha also reveals the truth about George's creative writing escapades: he had tried to publish a novel about a boy who accidentally killed both of his parents (with the implication that the deaths were actually murder), but Martha's father would not let it be published. George responds by attacking Martha, but Nick separates them.
In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Albee links the viciously bitter marriage of George and Martha to Cold War America. At the end of World War II (1945), the United States and the Soviet Union (now Russia ) became the two superpowers in the world. Military and political tension built up between these countries as they built alliances and stockpiled armaments (including nuclear bombs) in a quest for world supremacy. Rather than battles, the two sides competed in psychological warfare, propaganda, spying, the space race, and athletics. This created a great deal of fear and tension on both sides, which is reflected in the mood between George and Martha. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 signaled the beginning of the end of the Cold War. It formally ended in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved.
Albee was a chief proponent of the Theatre of the Absurd, a genre that flourished in the 1950s and 1960s, when Albee was establishing himself as a playwright of importance. In addition to Albee, playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd included Samuel Beckett (1906?–89), Eugène Ionesco (1909–94), and Vaclav Havel (1936–2011), among others. These playwrights held a pessimistic view of human existence, believing that life has no discernible, cohesive purpose. As a result communication sometimes became meaningless. Absurdist playwrights used these ideas to inform their plays and create their structures ... or lack thereof.