Act One - "Fun and Games"
George and Martha return from a faculty party, but Martha soon informs George that she has invited over guests. These guests, Nick and his wife, Honey, are much younger than George and Martha. During the "after-party" Martha taunts George. She stresses his failures brutally and drives him out of the room. Martha then 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; he fires it and an
umbrella pops out. Even after this joke, Martha's taunts continue. Nick and Honey grow uneasy; George reacts violently. Honey runs to the bathroom to
vomit.
Act Two - "Walpurgisnacht"
Nick and George are then alone. Nick talks about his wife and her
hysterical pregnancy. George proceeds to tell Nick a story about visiting a
gin mill with a
boarding school classmate. This friend had killed his mother accidentally by shooting her. He was laughed at for ordering "
bergin", killed his father while driving, and was committed to an
asylum shortly thereafter where he never spoke again. George and Nick argue. Eventually, George calls Nick a "smug son of a bitch." Once the wives rejoin the men, Martha begins to describe (in the face of a persistent protest from George) her husband's only novel, buried by her powerful and controlling father, a work which turns out to be embarrassingly autobiographical. The culmination of George's violent reaction to Martha's refusal to stop telling this story is to grab Martha by the throat and nearly strangle her. In his stage direction, Albee suggests that Nick may be making a connection between the "novel" and the story George had told him earlier.
George is quick to retort Martha's prior actions, in the next game, which he calls "Get the Guests." George tells an extemporaneous tale of "the Mousie" who "tooted brandy immodestly and spent half of her time in the upchuck," and Nick's thoroughly drunk wife realizes that the story is about her and her hysterical pregnancy. She feels as if she is about to be sick and runs to the bathroom again.
At the end of this scene, Martha starts to seduce Nick in George's presence. George reacts calmly, simply sitting and reading a book. As Martha and Nick walk upstairs, George throws his book against the door chimes in anguish; Honey returns, wondering who rang the doorbell.
Act Three - "The Exorcism"
Martha appears alone in the living room, shouting at the others to come out from hiding. Nick joins her after a while, recalling Honey in the bathroom winking at him. The doorbell rings: it is George, with a bunch of
snapdragons in his hand, calling out, "Flores para los muertos" (
flowers for the dead, in a reference to a line in
A Streetcar Named Desire). Martha and George argue about whether the moon is up or down (possibly a
Taming of the Shrew reference): George insists it is up, while Martha says she saw no moon from the bedroom. This leads to a discussion where Martha and George insult Nick in tandem, an argument that reveals that Nick was too drunk to have sex with Martha upstairs anyway.
George asks Nick to bring his wife back out for the final game "Bringing Up Baby." George and Martha have a son, about whom George has repeatedly told Martha to keep quiet over the course of the night, but now George talks about Martha's overbearingness toward their son. George then prompts Martha for her "recitation", in which they describe their son's upbringing in a bizarre duet. Martha describes their son's beauty and talents and then accuses George of ruining his life. As this tale progresses, George begins to recite sections of the
Dies Irae (part of the
Requiem, the
Latin mass for the dead).
At the end of the tale, George informs Martha that the door chimes heard earlier was a boy from
Western Union who brought a telegram that said their son had died: "killed late in the afternoon ... on a country road, with his learner's permit in his pocket, he swerved, to avoid a porcupine"—a description that matches that of the boy in the gin mill story told earlier. Martha screams "You can't do that!" and collapses.
It becomes clear that George and Martha never had a son and George has decided to "kill" him. Martha broke their rule that she could not speak of their son to others. Nick and Honey leave, realizing what has happened. The play ends with George singing, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" to Martha, whereupon she replies, "I am, George... I am."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who's_Afraid_of_Virginia_Woolf%3F
