Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is one of those plays that can't be avoided. And while I haven't seen it in the theater, I have just finished reading it in print. I was not disappointed.
Part of what I enjoyed most about the play is its sense of movement: Albee proceeds at a steady clip, and the play, while long, does not drag. This is all the more impressive, I think, because it includes only four characters.
And then there's Albee's facility for dialogue: there are exchanges here which pop, and which must be quite funny on the stage. Meanwhile, there are others -- especially involving the older of the two couples, George and Martha -- which are pointed and sad, and which must evoke emotion when performed.
I know the third and final act of Who's Afraid is thought to be the most famous -- with its unexpected ending, and its thematic resolution. I enjoyed this section, true, but I did not necessary find it the most compelling. For me, this was the second section -- "Walpurgisnacht" -- during which the characters are inverted, and the younger of the two couples is exposed for characteristics we might not expect: , frailty and hypocrisy, among them.
For me, this wasn't a play at the same level of O'Neill or Ionesco, for instance, but there is something here that's lasting, there's a sense in which Albee has laid bare the games we play: he's exposed them and their meaning, and in so doing, has made clear that those games are the things, however imagined, however strained, which keep us sane.
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