Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
A middle-aged couple invites a younger couple over for drinks after a faculty party, and the evening becomes a three-hour war of psychological annihilation. Albee stripped the American marriage comedy down to its bones. The play was denied the Pulitzer in 1963 because the advisory board found it too vulgar. It won anyway, eventually.
Three acts, three hours, and the second one (Albee called it Walpurgisnacht) grinds; the games begin to repeat before they escalate. Then the whole engine turns out to rest on the imaginary son, a twist that plays as either devastating or as a parlor trick depending on the night and your patience. George and Martha exhaust the couples they entertain. You too.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
