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No other piece of art has so beautifully captured the potential tragicomedy that occurs when people continue to gather late at night after the parties have ended, the bars have closed, and a sense of madness pervades the air. Even Mike Nichols’ opening credits, which show the dark, campus grounds on which our characters reside, reveal the terror that exists within the confines of domestic life. This was supposed to be the ideal, and playwright Edward Albee has something to say about that.
In “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” Taylor plays Martha, a professor’s wife and dean’s daughter who engages in a nearly three-hour argument with her husband, George (Richard Burton). The entire play (and its film adaptation) is essentially corrupt foreplay between two lost souls. When two colleagues come over for a late-night brandy, Martha and George relish the new audience and push things even further. When they discuss their unseen son, the audience is forced to wonder whether the child is real, or if it’s all part of the mind games between George and Martha, who only seem able to survive if they are torturing each other.
As Martha, Elizabeth Taylor is unbeatable. She never stops working, even when she’s chewing on chicken bones or playing with her ice. She gained weight for the role and wore heavy makeup. She was not trying to be beautiful. She knew Martha had a horror within her, an almost Baby Jane Hudson quality (which makes it even more fun when Martha impersonates Bette Davis early in the film). Despite the brutality that she exudes, however, Taylor still delivers plenty of pathos in the final minutes, when the audience begins to fully understand the horror they just witnessed, and the hangover starts to set in.
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