I’ve never watched

it all the way through — that is, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Although I’ve read it many times. I always stop at the beginning of act two -- when director Mike Nichols takes the action outside. Overall, I have to say that though Nichols and especially Elizabeth Taylor give this a damned good reading (I apologise for what I said before, Taylor is a pretty good actress here, despite her decolletage) nevertheless it is an arrogant and much overpraised ‘second play’ by a prodigious, conceited, and very privileged young writer. Albee wrote The Zoo Story before this, but this is his claim to fame, and it will not stand the test of time. It certainly seems to be written for eternity, the title is echoed in the last lines “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ “I am George, I am….,” (what in heaven’s name does that mean?). Yes, there are echoes of profundity — suggesting that we are on the edge of a new ‘decadence’ and when we final finally find out (spoiler alert, but you won’t care anyway) that George and Martha love each other deeply and George is really the one in control — it becomes a wannabe American realistic family melodrama. However Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is emphatically not Long Day’s Journey into Night, nor is it The Glass Menagerie, it is a genre that is an invention of Albee’s — and it simply does not work. Yes the first act is brilliant, witty and seems like genius — and is a novel take on comedy of manners. But Albee doesn’t come up with the goods. He seems to be aware of the deepest and most significant issue of aesthetics — the relationship between illusion and reality, as Albee has Martha state all too clearly: “Truth and illusion George, you don’t know the difference.” To which George replies “But we must carry on as if we did.” Yes yes of course Mr. Albee, we know how profound you are, but the problem here is that you— unlike the truly great writers — have not bothered to come up with an illusion that tempts us by transporting us magically to another world. For we don’t really care about George and Martha. Why should we? It’s not because they are evil, many writers make us care about terribly despicable people — it’s because Albee has not given any of himself to the work; he’s simply showing off. The fundamental flaw for me (there are so many) is that the play hearkens back to a time when the spoken word mattered — because it matters very much dramaturgically what George and Martha say to each other.  But it’s impossible to believe that those words have that sort of magical power here (yes, they once did but not here). 'Our son is dead!' says George. And Martha bursts into tears. But he is an imaginary son. Oh I see, -- the truth is that they have always wanted a child and therefore to hear George say ‘our son is dead’ crushes Martha —  sorry I’m not buying it. This a play where everyone can say anything they want most of the time— tell other people to go screw themselves, or that they are fat and ugly, but  the playwright has nevertheless arbitrarily decided that certain things, when spoken, are toxic (i.e. 'our child is dead') — it just doesn’t make sense on any level. Albee wants to have his cake and eat it too — write a controversial, shocking topical play about modern people but wrap them up in an ancient and moth-eaten culture of orality; it’s all just so pretentious and self-serving. That said; Albee has, generally speaking, been unfairly treated by the critics because he is gay. Although the fact that he was more closeted than Tennessee Williams is completely his fault. He didn’t come out until he was caught having sex with someone in the sand dunes in Provincetown (even then he claimed to be emptying the sand from his bathing suit). And to top it all off, yes,  (as Stanley Kauffman stated in his not-famous-enough homophobic attack on Williams, Inge, and Albee in 1966 “Homosexual drama and its Disguises”) Albee's work is evidently gay propaganda disguised as art. But Williams, and even Inge are better writers, and when Kauffman accused them of smuggling  a homosexual sensibility into the American theatre, he was partially right — but utterly unfair. There was no smuggling going on. Williams, by deifying his female heroes and objectifying his male ones definitely set heterosexuality on his head, but there is so much else going on that is of human and aesthetic worth there, that he needs must be forgiven. Williams also wrote quite openly and beautifully about homosexuality in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Inge yes — nothing but weak fathers and dominant mothers there — but who cares? Weak fathers and dominant mothers exist, and he observes them well. Albee, on the other hand, observed nothing for Who’s Afraid of Viriginia Woolf other than a couple of his gay friends arguing — it is undoubtedly a drag play. Bette Davis was offered the role of Martha — she wouldn’t play it because she said it was a drag role, and she was right. Taylor attempts to rise above all this by playing with realism and sensitivity, but ultimately this is not realistic drama (come on — if George has so much power over Martah— why is he acting like such a castrated wuss?). Oh right, 'nothing is as it seems,' says Albee. Sorry, but though it makes philosophical and aesthetic sense, it doesn’t make psychological sense, and all great writers need just a little bit of that. And why in heavens name do Honey and Nick stay? Why don’t they just run? I would. Who would stick around with this loser, narcisistic, ugly, old couple? Oh yes, Martha’s father is the president of the university; but no, I don’t buy it. I wish I could say I was jealous, and I am — of the first act — but what ultimately irks me is that nothing has changed. Straight people are still suspicious of what we might be smuggling into their lives. Well it’s as simple as this, it’s wit, sex, and tragedy, all rolled up into one; it’s about the idea that life is not one thing and one thing alone, but many things, and we're not saying that there is no right and wrong, but that such judgements matter less than the humanity and civility you offer another person in the very moment.