On the campus of a small New England college, George and Martha invite a new professor and his wife home for a nightcap. As the cocktails flow, the young couple finds themselves caught in the crossfire of a savage marital war where the combatants attack the self-deceptions they forged for their own survival. Steppenwolf ensemble members Tracy Letts and Amy Morton face off as one of theatre's most notoriously dysfunctional couples in Albee's hilarious and harrowing masterpiece.
The Broadway opening will mark exactly 50 years to the date after the play's original Broadway opening on Saturday, October 13, 1962. This production of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? originally ran at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company (December 13, 2010 - February 13, 2011) and then transferred to Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage (February 25 - April 10, 2011)
MacKinnon's production, which essentially re-claims the work from its post-Hollywood identity — of a vehicle for a diva dangling on the edge and her handsome, self-loathing husband — is an ideal way to pay tribute to Albee. It banishes the image of Elizabeth Taylor (or even Kathleen Turner's) Martha and substitutes Morton's more vulnerable, down-to-earth characterization of the daughter of a college president and a woman who plays games, lashes out and ties herself in knots, but all in the service of keeping a lid on the dangerously disappointed, and thus dangerously destructive, guy she married and clearly still loves...Morton and Letts together convey, better than any of the other actors I've seen in this familiar drama, the essentially smallness of George and Martha's suffocating little republic, a dominion that can never reach beyond themselves.
But fabrication, delusion and manipulation are integral to the play. Like Beckett and his existentialist comic nightmares, Albee mines a pitch-black absurdism. Fifty years on, and he’s still one step ahead of Broadway.
1962 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1976 | Broadway |
Broadway |
2005 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2012 | Broadway |
Steppenwolf Theatre Company Production Broadway |
2017 | West End |
West End Revival West End |
2020 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2013 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actor in a Play | Tracy Letts |
2013 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Amy Morton |
2013 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Director of a Play | Pam MacKinnon |
2013 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | 0 |
2013 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Tracy Letts |
2013 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Amy Morton |
2013 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Revival of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play | 0 |
2013 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actor in a Play | Tracy Letts |
2013 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actor in a Play | David Hyde Pierce |
2013 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Amy Morton |
2013 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Director of a Play | Pam MacKinnon |
2013 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | 0 |
2013 | Theatre World Awards | Theatre World Award | Carrie Coon |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Direction of a Play | Pam MacKinnon |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play | Tracy Letts |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play | Carrie Coon |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Amy Morton |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Jerry Frankel |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Steppenwolf Theatre Company |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Angelina Fiordellisi |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | GFour Productions |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Will Trice |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Kirmser Ponturo Fund |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Kathleen K. Johnson |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Ken Greiner |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Luigi & Rose Caiola |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Dramatic Forces |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Michael Palitz |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Cheryl Lachowicz |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Jam Theatricals |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Richard Gross |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Mark S. Golub & David S. Golub |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Patty Baker |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Amy Danis & Mark Johannes |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Kit Seidel |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Mary Lu Roffe |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Susan Quint Gallin |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Jeffrey Richards |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? |
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