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TONY COUPLES

ARTHUR HILL AND UTA HAGEN, WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, 1963

[[image--black and white photo of George, played by Arthur Hill, standing over Martha, played by Uta Hagen. George is grimacing or speaking forcefully; Martha is looking wary or thoughtful]]

It was emotion-filled, mind-scarring, gut-wrenching theatre, and it was more than three hours long. George and Martha, a college professor and his wife, spend an evening attacking one another and their young dinner guests, screaming like animals in pain, bemoaning 23 years of failure and disappointment, fantasizing and casting blame over their imaginary child, the child they never had.

The play was Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? George was Arthur Hill, who came to the role from highly praised performances in Look Homeward, Angel and All the Way Home. He has had a long film career, and he went on to star on television in "Owen Marshall, Counsellor at Law." Martha was Uta Hagen, a classic actress of the American stage, who had performed with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne and had won a previous Tony for The Country Girl.

Hagen was, and is, one of the finest teachers of acting in the United States. For more than 40 years she has taught at the HB Studio in New York, which was founded by Herbert Berghof, her late husband. But onstage at the Billy Rose Theatre, she has also taught with every performance. Throughout the run of 'Virginia Woolf', there was a nightly ritual. Because the play was so long, the curtain was still up after most other shows on Broadway had gone dark. And actors from the other plays would arrive at the Billy Rose and stand in the back of the orchestra, watching in awe and learning from a master, as Hagen pursued and was pursued by her demons in the harrowing final act.

Thirty years later, Hill recalls that what he was most conscious of those nights was that "people would come backstage after the performance looking as if they'd been hit by a baseball bat. And we were fine. They would say, 'How can you look so good after what you've been through?' And we said: 'You're the ones who've been through it, not us. We're used to it.' It's like an exhilarating game of tennis. We've learned how to play it. It's hard work, but it's fun."

Hagen once said that she prepared for the role -- imagining previous circumstances in Martha's life, creating characters Martha had previously known -- "for a whole month after I got the script, sitting alone in a chair, without talking to anybody or anything." Martha does terrible things, Hagen says, "but for the actor, even Iago can't be played with his knowing he's behaving badly. To play a monstrous person fully, the actor must justify things so the miserable actions come directly out of hurts, pains and vulnerabilities."

For Hill a crucial element of the performance was the large degree to which he and Hagen were dependent on each other. "When we realized the run was coming to an end, I said, 'This is like getting a divorce. It's awful.'"

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MASTER THEATRE QUIZ -- #5
Which of these Tony winners performed the number "American Dream"? (a) Mary Martin (b) Jonathan Pryce (c) Richard Kiley
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12

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