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

Michael Y. Bennett

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English

Routledge
11 July 2018

Performance art; Theatre Studies; Literary studies: plays & playwrights; Educational material

Series: The Fourth Wall

Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 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.

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.""

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.

By: Michael Y. Bennett
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 172mm, Width: 119mm,
Weight: 68g
ISBN: 9781138097421
ISBN 10: 113809742X
Series: The Fourth Wall
Pages: 56
Publication Date: 11 July 2018
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Michael Y. Bennett is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, USA.