From its debut in 1962, Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a wild success and a cultural lightning rod. The play transpires over one long, boozy night, laying bare the lies, compromises, and scalding love that have sustained a middle-aged couple through decades of marriage. It scandalized critics but magnetized audiences. Across 644 sold-out Broadway performances, the drama demolished the wall between what could and couldn't be said on the American stage and marked a definitive end to the I Love Lucy 1950s.
Then, Hollywood took a colossal gamble on Albee's sophisticated play-and won. Costarring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the sensational 1966 film minted first-time director Mike Nichols as industry royalty and won five Oscars. How this scorching play became a movie classic-surviving censorship attempts, its director's inexperience, and its stars' own tumultuous marriage-is one of the most riveting stories in all of cinema.
Lively, well-researched ... Convincing ... Gefter relies on interviews, newspaper and magazine articles from the era and Lehman’s extensive archives at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin to explore in depth the challenges they faced.
Gefter’s account is good, harrowing fun. His summing up is less persuasive ... His epilogue, which situates the film in the historical context of other movies about marriage, also feels out of sync with the narrative that has just preceded it.