Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

<p>Edward Albee's <em>Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?</em> shocked audiences and critics alike with its assault on decorum. At base though the play is simply a love story: an examination of a long-wedded life filled with the hopes dreams disappointments and pain that accompany the passing of many years together. </p><p>While the ethos of the play is tragicomic it is the anachronistic melodramatic secret object--the nonexistent son--that upends the audience's sense of theatrical normalcy. The mean and vulgar bile spewed among the characters hides these elements making it feel like something entirely new.</p><p>As Michael Y. Bennett reveals the play is the same emperor just wearing new clothes. In short it is straight out of the grand tradition of living room drama: Ibsen Chekhov Glaspell Hellmann O'Neill Wilder Miller Williams and Albee.</p>