Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

on programme

• 25. 09. 2021 at 20.00 SNG Nova Gorica

duration 2 hours without interval

premiere

14. May 2021, SNG Nova Gorica

about text

Late at night after a college faculty party Martha, the college president’s daughter, and her husband George, a history professor, invite over a young professor Nick and his wife Honey. The after party’s amiable atmosphere soon turns into a cruel fight in which bitter realities of a long-term toxic marriage are revealed, as well as repressed frustrations of the young couple. A complex drama about a fight between a man and a woman and the intertwining of reality and illusions takes place on an American university campus in the early second half of the last century, but is, because of its lucid analysis of the hypocrisy of the intelligentsia class, equally exciting today.

Edward Albee’s most famous play created a stir at its Broadway premiere and received opposing reactions. It soon gained international acclaim, particularly after the film version with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The first Slovenian production came two years after its creation, and five stagings followed, this time, it will come to life as a part of the Studio, a new special programme of the Nova Gorica theatre.

“The play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is Edward Albee’s perfect creation and has been my secret love for years. It allows the spectator, the actor and the director the perfect freedom and leaves an individual trace in everyone. It’s witty in its message which it conveys through the absurd comedy of the situations, and it asks the fundamental question about the meaning of human existence. And it asks, above all: What is the truth?
Who knows whether the delusions of the married couples are the cause or the consequence of the galactic confusion? With its sharp language, scary expressions, child-like vulnerability and funny naïveté of the protagonists, Albee pushed his masterpiece to the extremes.”

Radoš Bolčina

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