Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?


Finished another book a couple of days ago. So Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf? is a play written by Edward Albee. I have see a couple of his works performed before at my college (Zoo Story is the only title I can recall) and they were very different plays than I was used to. Lots of talking, not a whole lot of action and smaller cast. This play revolves around a couple of college professors, together with their wives, staying up late drinking. The four of them get extremely drunk. George and Martha are the older couple; Martha is the daughter of the college president. I can only imagine that watching the two of them tear eachother apart would be extrmely uncomfortable (not the painfull "the Breakup" level of akwardness though - that movie was like eating glass!) and unsettling, but that seems to be what Albee goes for. I thought their banter was well written, and the whole thin had me chuckling.

There are so many akward situations and they are written in such way that you cannot help but feel the embarassment of the characters radiating off the page. I looked it up and it seems there is a film version with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. I may have to hit up Blockbuster. Everytime I read a play I can picture my theatre professor saying that a written play is not a complete work like a novel is. The script isn't the finished product; the production is. That does not mean reading a play cannot be a worthwhile persuit, but I like to keep that in mind while reading plays.

So book two down for the year! I'm halfway through this month and I want to knock out a couple more still. I'm in the process of reading The Book Theif by Markus Zukas - just barely started but it is looking really interesting - and I've also started Zipporah, Wife of Moses by Marek Halter. I'm also reading two nonfiction books about books - Nabokov's Butterfly: And Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books by Rick Gekoski and Once Again to Zelda: The Stories Behind Literature's Most Intriguing Dedications by Marlene Wagman-Gellar. Both are very interesting but I have been taking my time reading them.

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