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>