It didn't come from the heavens or from the waterways that surround the island of Manhattan.
Nor did it shake the Great White Way from below like an earthquake.
But it thwacked the American stage across the side of the head like a blow from a two-by-four. And nothing has been the same ever since.
It all came from the pen of 34-year-old play playwright Edward Albee. It was called Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and it startled audiences and awakened critics to a bold, new form of American drama -- a raw, no-holds-barred, obscenity-laced marital tug of war that lifted the lid off conventional society and left theatergoers marveling at its audacity and debating its meaning for years to come.
The play takes place on a college campus in New England.
George and Martha (the main husband and wife characters) invite a new professor and his wife to their house after a party. Martha is the daughter of the president of the college where George is an associate professor of history. Nick (who is never addressed or introduced by name) is a biology professor (who Martha thinks teaches math), and Honey is his mousy, brandy-loving wife.
Once at home, Martha and George continue drinking and engage in relentless, scathing verbal and sometimes physical abuse in front of Nick and Honey. The younger couple are simultaneously fascinated and embarrassed. They stay even though the abuse turns periodically towards them as well.
The evening is long, raucous, brazen, scary at times and psychologically naked.
Of all the plays that Edward Albee has written before or since, this remains his masterwork. Turned into a landmark film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in 1966, the play has been revived on Broadway regularly.
Now it has returned to Broadway again where it is set to open on October 13, exactly 50 years to the date after its debut. We've had a chance to see this new production from the renowned Steppenwolf Theatre Company in preview at the Booth Theater and we can tell you that it is an attentively faithful, often daring, thoroughly complete, first-rate production with a superb cast.
What's surprising about Who's Afraid is the way it still entertains: the way it grabs you by the lapels from the getgo; the way it shamelessly gets you laughing at insults and absurdities, even squeezing chuckles out the the most tense-filled moments; the way it unfolds like a three-part, unsung opera where the characters still have their grand solos and ensemble moments.
And like a grand opera it's capable of leaving you almost breathless.
What's more, just when you think you've figured it all out, it challenges you again and makes you wonder what will happen next. But be forewarned -- it does take a bit of endurance.
Eschewing camp, Amy Morton underplays the role of Martha and endows the character with new dimensions and even a tenderness rarely seen in previous productions. Not only does she remain the center of the entire production but this Martha is embrued with a mature Lauren Bacall sensuality. As George, Tracy Letts is harsher, louder and at times a bit more stereotypical but he gives as good as he gets and that's no small feat with Martha on the scene. Madison Dirk's Nick arrives with an appropriate lanky awkwardness but faces the reality of the evening with resilience, unveiling his character's aspirations, foibles and erroneous zones step-by-step. And as Honey, Carrie Coon takes on the limp, "wifey" role and gamely works to lift it beyond parody.
One set. Two intermissions. Three acts. Four characters. Lots of words and more than a few antics. This is a long evening in the theater. And as the layers are peeled away, George, Martha, Nick and Honey are pretty much left bare. But the questions remain. Does Honey still want a baby and a family? Is Nick still willing to claw his way through the treacherous and tedious political ivy of academia to get to -- where? And can George and Martha put aside their tortuous and destructive games and face their fears and disillusions?
O course, the play's title, refers to the English novelist Virginia Wolff, and incorporates a parody of the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"
Here's what Edward Albee has said about it:
"I was in there having a beer one night, and I saw 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' scrawled in soap, I suppose, on this mirror. When I started to write the play it cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf . . . who's afraid of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather typical, university intellectual joke."
Without false illusions.
What's tantalizingly contradictory is that this enduring drama (itself an illusion) forces us to confront Albee's question and ponder it anew.
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