Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee first staged in October 1962. It examines the complexities of the marriage of middle-aged couple Martha and George. Late one evening, after a university faculty party, they receive unwitting younger couple Nick and Honey as guests, and draw them into their bitter and frustrated relationship.
1962 Broadway poster
Edward Franklin Albee III was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Three Tall Women (1994). Some critics have argued that some of his work constitutes an American variant of what Martin Esslin identified and named the Theater of the Absurd. Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.
Albee in 1975
Edward Albee, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1961
Edward Albee by Irish artist Reginald Gray (The New York Times, 1966), inspired by a photograph taken in 1962 from Bettmann/Corbis.
Albee in 1997