Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee first staged in October 1962. It examines the complexities of the marriage of a middle-aged couple, Martha and George. Late one evening, after a university faculty party, they receive an unwitting younger couple, Nick and Honey, as guests, and draw them into their bitter and frustrated relationship. The play is in three acts, normally taking a little less than three hours to perform, with two 10-minute intermissions. The title is a pun on the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" from Walt Disney's Three Little Pigs (1933), substituting the name of the celebrated English author Virginia Woolf. Martha and George repeatedly sing this version of the song throughout the play. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? won both the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1962–63 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. It is frequently revived on the modern stage. The film adaptation was released in 1966, written by Ernest Lehman, directed by Mike Nichols, and starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, George Segal and Sandy Dennis. Plot summary Act One: "Fun and Games" George and Martha engage in dangerous emotional games. George is an associate professor of history and Martha is the daughter of the president of the college where George teaches, the fictitious New Carthage. After they return home from a faculty party, Martha reveals she has invited a young married couple she met at the party over for a drink. The guests arrive—Nick, a biology professor (who Martha thinks teaches math), and his wife, Honey. As the four drink, Martha and George engage in scathing verbal abuse of each other in front of Nick and Honey. The younger couple is first embarrassed and later enmeshed. They stay. Martha taunts George aggressively, and he retaliates with his usual passive aggression. Martha tells an embarrassing story about how she humiliated him with a sucker punch in front of her father. During the telling, George appears with a gun and fires at Martha, but a Chinese parasol pops out of the gun barrel, to Martha's hilarity. After that, Martha's taunts continue more than ever. She tells how it was thought that George would take over from Martha's father or at least as head of the history department, but George wasn't sufficiently ambitious for that, he revealed himself "… a FLOP! A great … big