Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
Having watched a bio-documentary of Elizabeth Taylor in which the critic Derek Malcolm argued that the above film, based on the Edward Albee play, proved she could act, I duly ordered the DVD.
It stars Elizabeth Taylor as Martha, the daughter of the President of the Faculty, and her husband George (Richard Burton), Head of the History Department.
Almost all of the film involves a row fuelled by excessive drink between the two.
Into that row are dragged guests Nick (George Segal) and his wife Honey (Sandy Dennis).
These type of plays, coming after those of the Angry Young Men, were designed more to shock than to entertain.
It also showcased the stormy Burton/Taylor marriage.
By this time Elizabeth Taylor was running to fat and Burton to drink.
He still had the voice but that was about all.
At first I thought it sad but funny, then rather revolting, before finally giving up on it altogether after Sandy had a turn of vomiting.
It transpires that Martha and George were infertile and the hidden secret is the reference to a son they never had. Big deal.
Perhaps the most enduring part of the play and film is the title.
Cleverly modelled on the Big Bad Wolf, Disney wanted so much for the rights of the song that the leading actors sung Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush.
The Angry Young Men like John Osborne were a reaction to the cosier, bourgeois dramas of Noel Coward but – some 80 years on – it is Coward and Terence Rattigan who are being revived and the likes of Albee and Edward Bond forgotten … and rightly so.
