Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf, who's afraid of the big bad wolf?...
George and Martha, a middle aged couple live in the premises of a New England college, where Goerge teaches and Martha is the daughter of the university president. After a party, they return home late at night -around 2:00, where Martha announces that she has invited over a young couple for a drink, a new professor, Nick and his wife, Honey. Nick and Honey arrive shortly after and an all-nighter starts, which, with the "help" of alcohol, turns into a perverse game of verbal abuse and self-deprecation between George and Martha. This game will leave no one unafected, even the young couple will have to live with the consequences of this night. Nothing will be the same.
Camera starts rolling and we watch a profonously inebriated couple walking home. Two names come up in the screen, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The actors, still a couple at that time, give their best performaces. Rumours say that the studios wanted a much older couple of actors for the role and specifically Bette Davis and James Mason, But Nichols -the director of the film- was afraid that the audience wouldn't stand to watch intimidating Bette Davis to yell for two hours, according to the script, to soft James Mason. So he preferred the most famous and most discussed couple of actors in Hollywood, Taylor and Burton, known for their quarrels, both in public and in private.
Mike Nchols, in his first film narrates a story about a relationship, the relationship of George and Martha. Their marriage, too, is a horrendous wreck, that stays afloat by unknown powers. But in this story, Nick and Honey (the other young couple) is involved. Four person caught inside a game for power. During this fateful night, George and Martha have exchanged extremely rude insults to each other.
George: Be careful, Martha…I’ll rip you to pieces. Martha: You aren’t man enough…you haven’t the guts. George: Total war? Martha: Total.
Martha at first seems to us like a maniac, a person who wants to redicule her mate, to make him feel inferior. She looks like the big, bad wolf ready to swallow her prey. Edward Albee, whose play the script was based. maybe had in mind the fairy tale "The Three Little Pigs", portaying Martha as the big bad wolf.
But in Albee's play, all of them take turns playing the role of the "bad wolf" who attacks the, ostensibly innocent, other three. Certainly in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" no one is innocent: Not even the sweeping (dean's daughter) Martha, who oozes hatred and bile for her failed husband George, "the bottom of the history department himself." Nor does George who accepts all challenges of mutual elimination from his wife "in a 100-point mental wakefulness" to get back at her and stomp on her in the end with terrifying rage. Nor is the opportunistic Nick innocent who, though a biologist, is invested in his marriage to a naive Southern rich girl, Honey. And of course, neither is Honey who impersonated the pregnant woman to officially "wrap him up".
in the end, we see four persons hurt, injured by their expectations, their hopes. It is the claustrophobic atmosphere of the film, with the constant action, the merciless dialogues that states us the conclusion :
Not everything is what we see.
Thanks for reading!!!
