Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee, first staged in 1962. It examines the complexities of the marriage of a middle-aged couple, Martha and George. Late one evening, after a university faculty party, they receive an unwitting younger couple, Nick and Honey, as guests and draw them into their bitter and frustrated relationship. [The play] won both the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1962–63 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play.
— Wikipedia
ACT ONE
GEORGE
Martha, my wife! Let us engage in dangerous emotional games!
MARTHA
George, an associate professor of history.
GEORGE
Martha, the daughter of the president of the college where I teach.
MARTHA
George.
GEORGE
Yes, Martha?
MARTHA
I have invited a young married couple, whom I met at the faculty party we have just returned from, for a drink.
A knock on the door.
GEORGE
Well, that must be them now.
NICK
Hi, I’m Nick. A // biology professor –
MARTHA
This is Nick, he teaches math!
HONEY
And I’m his wife, Honey.
GEORGE
Let us drink.
They all drink. Shuffling of glassware.
MARTHA
Say George?
GEORGE
Yes Martha?
MARTHA
Why don’t we engage in scathing verbal abuse of each other in front of Nick and Honey?
GEORGE
Splendid!
NICK & HONEY
We are embarrassed!
MARTHA
Well now you are enmeshed!
NICK & HONEY
We have to stay.
MARTHA
George, I taunt you mercilessly!
GEORGE
And I will retaliate with my usual passive aggression.
MARTHA
Nick, Honey, listen to this embarrassing story of how I humiliated George with a sucker punch in // front of my father –
George appears with a gun and fires at Martha, but an umbrella pops out.
MARTHA
What a scare, you appearing with a gun and firing at me, but an umbrella pops out instead!
Now, let me continue my taunts!
GEORGE
I am reacting violently!
He smashes a bottle.
NICK & HONEY
We are increasingly unsettled.
HONEY
I need to vomit because I’ve had too much to drink.
MARTHA
I will attend to her.
ACT TWO
GEORGE
Hey Nick, let’s go outside and talk about our wives.
NICK
My wife had a hysterical pregnancy once.
GEORGE
Well this one time, I went to a gin mill with some boarding school classmates, one of whom had accidentally killed his mother by shooting her. We all laughed at him for ordering “bergin.”
NICK
Wow. Mmhm.
GEORGE
The next summer, that friend killed his father while driving, was committed to an asylum, and never spoke again.
NICK
Let’s change the subject.
GEORGE
What to?
NICK
Let’s talk about having children?
GEORGE
That’s stupid.
NICK
You’re stupid!
GEORGE
Ugh. Let’s rejoin the women in the house.
MARTHA
Nick! Dance with me suggestively!
Did I ever tell you of 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 my father would not let it be published!
GEORGE
Why, you!!
George attacks Martha. Nick separates them.
NICK
Woah woah, this is going too far!
GEORGE
Sure.
Tell you what, let’s play a new game! Get the Guests.
I’ll start by insulting and mocking Honey with an extemporaneous tale of “the Mousie” who “tooted brandy immodestly and spent half her time in the upchuck!”
HONEY
Hey, that extemporaneous story sounds like it’s about me and my hysterical pregnancy!!
How dare you imply that I trapped Nick into marrying me because of a false pregnancy!
I feel sick. I’m going to run to the bathroom again.
MARTHA
Hey George, you still here?
GEORGE
Mm.
MARTHA
Good.
Hey Nick, what would you do if I started to act seductively toward you in George’s presence?
NICK
Um.
GEORGE
Don’t mind me, I’m just pretending to react calmly, reading a book.
MARTHA
Let me show you the upstairs.
George throws his book against the door.
GEORGE
Well that might have been uncouth.
Now, I must come up with a plan to tell Martha that our son has died.
ACT THREE
MARTHA
HEY! OLLY OLLY OXENFREE! COME OUT!
NICK
Whew.
The doorbell rings.
MARTHA
Who could that be?
GEORGE
Flores para los muertos!
MARTHA
George, is the moon up or down?
GEORGE
Up!
MARTHA
I saw no moon from the bedroom.
GEORGE
Oh yeah? Well Nick’s disgusting.
MARTHA
What? He’s clearly pathetic.
GEORGE
He’s a narc!
MARTHA
A crook!
GEORGE
A stinker!
MARTHA
Too drunk to have sex with me upstairs!!
Beat.
GEORGE
Honey? Honey, would you come back here? It’s time for the final game, Bringing Up Baby.
MARTHA
We have a –
GEORGE
Keep quiet about that.
You’ve always had an overbearing attitude toward our son.
Now, let us hear your recitation.
MARTHA & GEORGE
We will now describe, in a bizarre duet, our son’s upbringing.
Our son was beautiful and talented, and George ruined his life.
George will now recite sections of the Libera Me part of the Requiem Mass,
the Latin mass for the dead.
GEORGE
Martha. A messenger from Western Union arrived at the door earlier with a telegram saying that our son was “killed in the late afternoon…on a country road, with his learner’s permit in his pocket.” He “swerved, to avoid a porcupine.”
NICK
Say, that description matches that of the boy in the gin mill story you told earlier.
MARTHA
You can’t do that!!
NICK & HONEY
It’s becoming clear to us that George and Martha’s son is a mutually agreed-upon fiction. The fictional son is the final “game” the two have been playing since discovering early in their marriage that they are infertile.
GEORGE
I decided to “kill” him because you broke the game’s single rule: never mention our son to others.
NICK & HONEY
We are overcome with horror and pity.
We’re out of here.
MARTHA
George. We could…invent a new imaginary child?
GEORGE
I forbid it. It was time for the game to end.
Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolfe?
Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolfe?
Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolfe?
MARTHA
I am, George…I am.
END OF PLAY
