Why Can’t We Quit George and Martha?

Mark PeikertSun, August 23, 2026 at 11:00 AM UTC

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Not every couple can stay interesting for more than 60 years, but George and Martha in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?have managed to do it. Since the play premiered on Broadway in 1962, they’ve been drinking, sparring, and playing Get the Guests—and A-list stars have flocked to portray the perpetually sneering, surprisingly tender pair.

This month Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup take on the roles—which were made famous on film by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton—in a new West End staging of the drama directed by Marianne Elliott and premiering September 21. But why are these ostensibly unpleasant people still enthralling us in a world in which unpleasant people are so readily available elsewhere?

“George and Martha are a kind of X-ray of every couple,” says Philip Gefter, who wrote the 2024 book Cocktails with George and Martha. “While their drunken late night mudslinging might seem vulgar and ugly, we can thank Edward Albee for having such keen, sharp-witted insight into human nature that their bad behavior reflects the complex of extreme emotions residing at the core of all marital attachment, for better or worse.”

Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup will star in a London revival ofWho’s Afraid of Virignia Woolf, opening September 21.Courtesy Sohoplace

In other words, the play has always been a story about two people perfectly matched. Tracy Letts, during his Tony-winning run in a 2013 production, said, “We always believed it was a love story—I think that’s the real reason for the endurance of the play. For all of the horror of it, there’s a kernel of something positive, and hopeful, and loving at the center of it.” In 2005 Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin treated the play’s ending as hopeful as well. And Elaine Stritch (a replacement for Martha in the original Broadway run) attested that she had her first orgasm while onstage performing the play.

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There is also the fact that George and Martha are deeply funny. In a 2005 New York Times review, Ben Brantley referred to the play’s “abundant, alarming humor that finds the gut-wrenching factor in belly laughs.” Martha’s insults land with the precision of an assassin, while George’s deadpan retaliations can feel almost urbane. Their chemistry crackles because they’re both smart enough to understand the game and too damaged to stop playing it.

Every era thinks it has discovered a new version of toxicity, but George and Martha shrug off modern therapizing. They are not merely codependent narcissists. Their combat adds necessary meaning to their lives because, without the games, there may be nothing left.

Perhaps that’s why George and Martha endure while so many stage couples calcify into period pieces. They embody a truth polite society prefers to edit out: Love is not always healing. Sometimes it’s competitive. Or performative. And sometimes it’s fueled by wounds that both people can’t help reopening.

This story appears in the September 2026 issue of Town & Country.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”