where art thou edward

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by edward albee has to be one of the 10 or so best things ever written mostly in the english language. but who can count these things. it's tough to number the sublime.

some "facts" about this play about truth and allusion (among other things):

1
when the play was denied the pulitzer in 1962, two members of the committe resigned and no play received the award.

2
the play's original title was to have been The Exoricism.

3
what's-his-all-american-blue-haired-blond-eyed-face robert redford turned down the film role of nick in the highly acclaimed mike nichols' directed 1966 adaptation. psh. he always was shooting to be the effectual one wudn't he? (george segal took the role. he was smashing, no?)

a few years ago in a basement theatre on the campus of wayne state on a friiiiiigid january night i dragged vin to see albee's Seascape (which did garner him the pulitzer). too little too late is what i said. P.U. is what vin said, who has no respect for the absurd - when it's onstage. put it in the middle of our kitchen, living room or back deck in the middle of a bunch of guests and he's all over that shite, though.

i mean, let's look again at the words of george (the main dude, not segal) shall we...

but first a word on george and martha. george. martha. get it? america's first couple. setting up house. disorderly. disgusting. mythic. ready to tumble. and then george says (at nick, not to him) [remember nick? he's the ultra good looking biology phenom who's primed to take over the department. he's youthful, rational, rarin to go. but also a smidge underhanded, which is why redford turned down the role if you ask me]:


"You take the trouble to construct a civilization . . . to . . . to build a society, based on the principles of . . . of principle . . . you endeavor to make communicable sense out of natural order, morality out of the unnatural disorder of man's mind . . . you make government and art, and realize that they are, must be, both the same . . . you bring things to the saddest of all points . . . the the point where there is something to lose . . . then all at once, through all the music, through all the sensible sounds of men building, attempting, comes the Dies Irae. And what is it? What does the trumpet sound? Up yours. I suppose there's justice to it, after all the years. . . . Up yours."


lest you think the whole thing is soliloquy...it's not. it's mostly sick and disturbing and funny as hell. wife picking at husband, husband protecting himself. horribly to-the-bone hurtful. and funny as hell. but i repeat myself.


"And the west, encumbered by crippling alliances, and burdened with a morality too rigid to accmmodate itself to the swing of events, must . . . eventually . . . fall."


these are about the only two outright political things albee says. mostly it's allusion and perry and twist and marriage and infidelity and hide-and-seek with truth. all set inside game-playing. kids with wickedly sharp wit and tongues.

always seemed to me sneaky smart people are scarier than weapon-weilding stupid people. not because weapons don't eviserate. smarts just has truer aim.

thanks for the pain, edward a.