This entire presentation is copyright © 1968 and © 1999 by William Allin Storrer. Phd. For permission to quote, contact Dr. Storrer at mindalive@storrer.com
In comparing the drama of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1with the film bearing the same title, one is confronted with the question of what artifacts are to be compared. Is a production of the play to be compared with the film? Then, which production? Is the play script to be compared with the film script? If so, does the film script compare to the film made from it in the same manner that a production of the play compares with the play script?
The difficulty of choosing which two artifacts to place next each other for comparison may be illustrated in the following moment of Albee's work:
< MARTHA
SCREW YOU!
(simultaneously with MARTHA'S last remark, GEORGE flings open the front door. HONEY and NICK are framed in the entrance. There is a brief silence, then . . . .)
(Ostensibly a pleased recognition of HONEY and NICK, but really satisfaction at having MARTHA'S explosion overheard)
Ahhhhhhhhh!>2
In the original New York stage production, Martha hurls her "Screw you" at George, and the unsuspecting guests, across the full width of the stage. In the performance viewed by this writer on the evening of December 26, 1962, the audience laughed for whatever reason, perhaps because it had witnessed Martha trap and embarrass herself.
The Columbia phonograph recording3 of this same New York production, deprived of the visual emphasis given Martha's utterance and subsequent embarrassment, does not produce an equally laughable situation.
In the film,4 the situation is established in an altogether different manner. Instead of a view of all four characters at once as on the stage, the film presents them in sequence close-up. On the embarrassing words (changed to "Goddamn you" in the final cut of the film), there is a cut from a medium shot on George to a close two-shot of Nick and Honey, then quickly two more cuts to show Martha and George.
The Warner Bros.-Seven Arts phonograph recording5 of the Hollywood film production, deprived of the visual activity that accompanies Martha's utterances does not produce as strong an Impression as the film, even though it contains the original "Screw you."
From these four different presentations of Albee's published play script, one may receive four different impressions, though each bears similarities to the others. Herein lies the difficulty of, and the interest in, comparing Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as drama and as film.
Even though Albee himself has said that this play is "about as much a comedy as 'American Dream.' It should be funny and horrible, alternately"6 the question is not about what moments are funny, and which are the alternately horrible moments. The question is what these moments reveal, and how, in two media, drama and film.
Our concern must be directed to the overall impression one receives from the drama in whatever medium it may be presented. This impression is not created of a whole cloth, but piecemeal, or as John Gassner put it in his review of the play,
<. . theatre exists moment by moment (this does not mean, of course, haphazardly), and that, come what may later, an experience is an experience while it is being experienced.>7
To solve the problem of what the play can means it may be necessary to approach the drama part by part to determine the final, whole-cloth answer.
What is sought is an artifact that is the drama of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and another artifact that is the film of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? A one to one equation of the sort A = B. or "stage moment equals film moment" may not be possible.
The artifact that is the dramatic equivalent to the film at first consideration would seem to be a "production" of the play, some performance of the script by actors in a theater. This leads to the question of "which production?" Should it be the original New York production, the Prague production titled Who's Afraid of Franz Kafka?, 8 the Stockholm production directed by film director Ingmar Bergman or the Rome production directed by film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli?9 Or should it be any of the great number of other productions given throughout the world?
The answer to "which production," could it be given or should any attempt be made to give it, might be worded; "this is the right production because it reveals the most important aspect of the play." If this suggestion is to bear any fruit, it is because we realize in such an answer that we have in fact prejudged what the play should say, and are looking for a production which produces a prescribed reaction in us or the audience. This is a false lead, for it avoids the root of our judgement, the script itself, from which come all possible productions.
Any one production may reveal one or another aspect of the drama effectively, but only the script remains immutable, always containing all possible interpretations of the drama. As Chester Clayton Long notes:
<The performance of a drama is an ephemeral thing. In criticizing its structure it is generally a more reliable method to depend on the text rather than on a performance of that text, though certainly performance cannot be altogether ignored.>10
It is necessary to turn to the literary artifacts and draw from them interpretations that represent various approaches to the dramas from the simplest level of surface reality, to the most difficult level of symbolic implication. Each of these must be founded on the text as Edward Albee has released it for publication, for this is the drama in its most immutable form. Though the obvious implication that any interpretation may be the basis for a stage production in the mind of some director cannot be avoided, the "how" of how this interpretation might lead to a stage production will not be of especial concern.
A great number of interpretations may be drawn from the text. A suitable choice of interpretation can allow a wide range of possibilities so as to suggest those factors within the drama that cannot be avoided when all interpretations of lesser richness are eliminated from consideration.
The choice of interpretations for discussion in this dissertation has been reduced to four, beginning with the simplest level of reality: two college couples engaging in an evening's verbal battle over too much liquor. The next consideration is that of the drama as tragedy, a pattern of events that has, since the time of Attic Tragedy and before, affected every sort of audience. The third is another aspect of the universal application of the realistic story, the question of truth versus illusion in everyman's life. The fourth, perhaps the least specific of all the interpretations in the apparent consistency of its revelations sees Martha and George as symbols of the decline of the west. These interpretations are not mutually exclusive, for the fact that supports one view may, when connected to a different series of evidential facts, suggest one of the other interpretations.
Film, just as the stage, has limitations, but of a quite different nature. A film is a cooperative effort of many people. The film director may only coach the actors, while the shooting angles may be determined by a separate director of photography, and what is finally seen by an audience may be more the product of the film editor than either of these.
<Once the final editing has been done in the sound film, all the elements of the film's structure--sound, images, montage sequences, scenes and finally the total structure of the film itself--usually remain invariable. Its nature is ordinarily fixed, static. Whereas in the drama only the language structure can remain absolutely fixed.>11
Where the variability of stage productions forces the choice of the play script as the immutable version of the dramas with film the final production itself may be studied, for it is equally immutable. Indeed, the study of the film in its final produced form is preferred to the study of the screenplay, or scenarios from which it is drawn, because
<The film's structure is not fully embodied in the scenario; it actually resides in the strip of celluloid that makes up the finished product in the form of images; this is true even of the sound of the film.>12
For this reason, Long concludes that
<. . . in the film we generally must criticize one fixed, final performance of the scenario. The scenario can aid us to some extent, but our real criticism must commence and end with an experience of the film as it actually exists in fixed performance. The scenario may be an aid to our study in helping us recall the filmed end product . . .>13
For this presentation, then, four interpretations of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? shall be developed from the play script, hereafter generally called Stagwoolf to eliminate any confusion as to which "Virginia Woolf" is being discussed. The film version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, hereafter generally called Cinewoolf, will then be considered to see how it treats each of these interpretations in achieving a filmic transformation of Albee's creation.
1. Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (New York. Athenaeum, 1962).
2. Ibid., p. 19.
3. Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, original New York production (New York: Columbia Records album DOS 687, 1963).
4. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a Chenault Production produced by Ernest Lehman, screenplay by Ernest Lehman based on the play by Edward Albee, directed by Mike Nichols, with original music by Alex North (Burbank, California: Warner Bros -Seven Arts film, 1966).
5. Edward Albee and Ernest Lehman, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, complete film play (Burbank, California: Warner Bros.-Seven Arts album B 1657, 1966).
6. "King of Off-Broadway," Newsweek, LVII (March 13, 1962), p. 90.
7. John Gassner, "Broadway in Review," Educational Theatre Journal, XV (March, 1963), p. 78.
8. Thomas B. Morgan "Angry Playwright in a Soft Spell," Life, LXII (May 26, 1967), p. 97.
9. "Albee Revisited," The New Yorker, XL (December 19, 1964), p. 32.
10. Chester Clayton Long, "Cocteau's Orphée. From Myth to Drama and Film," The Quarterly Journal of Speech, V (October 1, 1965), p. 321.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Stagwoolf is chosen over what may seem the more obvious choice, Stagewoolf, even though the former may be pronounced the same as the latter, because this writer believes the play to be the tragedy of George, the "stag" character, as will be developed in Chapter III. Cinewoolf came to mind before any other possibilities could raise a doubt as to its appropriateness.