'Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf' Is Back

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” is back.  We’ll talk with the Broadway director about the most infamous couple on stage.

Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” shocked and scorched theater audiences when it opened in 1962.  A bitter, drunken, brutal marriage laid out mercilessly for all to see.  Love and hate - more hate - and flying, razor-edged lines.  Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton took it to the big screen and the whole country gasped.

Now it’s back on Broadway, and critics are still gasping.  At how complicated and dangerous love can be.

This hour, On Point:  we talk marriage and drama with Pam McKinnon, director of the Broadway revival of  “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”
-Tom Ashbrook

Charles Isherwood, drama critic for the New York Times. You can find his review here.

Pam MacKinnon, Tony- and Lortel-nominated theater director. Her latest Broadway revival is: Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

William Doherty, professor and director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program in the Department of Family Social Science, College of Education and Human Development, at the University of Minnesota.

New York Observer "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Edward Albee’s seminal and searing portrait of a viciously feuding, functionally alcoholic, codependently miserable and mildly delusional married couple, opened Saturday night at the Booth Theatre, 50 years to the day after its Broadway debut. It was last seen in New York only seven years ago, starring Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner, but the new production, which originated at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, is a welcome return."

Daily News "Originally a showcase for Arthur Hill and Uta Hagen and in 2005 for Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner, the drama is back on Broadway in a production from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company."

USA Today "Though Tracy Letts began his career as an actor, he became a Broadway star for his work offstage, as the playwright who in 2008 collected both a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize for August: Osage County, a darkly hilarious, deeply unsettling study of an embattled Oklahoma family."

Here's a video looking at the new play.

Here's the 1966 trailer of the film with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.