Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Revised by the Author

A bitter marriage unravels in Edward Albee's darkly humorous play—winner of the Tony Award for Best Play.

“Twelve times a week,” answered actress Uta Hagen when asked how often she’d like to play Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In the same way, audiences and critics alike could not get enough of Edward Albee’s masterful play. A dark comedy, it portrays husband and wife George and Martha in a searing night of dangerous fun and games. By the evening’s end, a stunning, almost unbearable revelation provides a climax that has shocked audiences for years. With its razor-sharp dialogue and the stripping away of social pretense, Newsweek rightly foresaw Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as “a brilliantly original work of art—an excoriating theatrical experience, surging with shocks of recognition and dramatic fire [that] will be igniting Broadway for some time to come.”

Edward Albee was born in 1928 and was adopted and raised in Westchester, New York. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? won the 1961 Tony Award for best play. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for drama, the 1980 Gold Medal in Drama, the 1996 Kennedy Center Honors, the 1996 National Medal of Arts, the 2000 Tony Award for best play for The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, and the 2005 Tony Special Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. He died in 2016.