You're a Whore, Lucowski!

Henry waking at noon hears the sounds of Afro-Cuban Jazz on WXBQ, Hot 97. Walking to the kitchen for coffee in his underwear he sees Lucia his Cuban wife of a year dancing naked in the living room, saying as she moves about wildly, 

Oh, darling, the musica Cubana makes me hot, when I hear it I just have to get up and move! Rubbing his eyes he says,  

How bout a drink babe? 

In the kitchen he brews Columbia Coffee and mixes a pitcher of bloody marys, pouring a tumbler for Lucia who’s exhausted, laying on the living room sofa with a towel on her head. Then, the phone rings, it’s Dave Spleen, editor of the Big Apple free rag, HEADBANGER Magazine. Henry picks up the phone and Dave, speaking faster than a speeding bullet says, 

Henry, baby, your bit on Thomas Pynchon in the last issue was tits, New Yorkers love your stuff, you the man baby, how’s your sexpot wife? Christ almighty she’s hot, she bustin you nut or what? Anyway, I want you to do a review on Edward Albee’s play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe, it’s playing at the SoHo Playhouse tonight at 9, take Lucia, there’ll be a couple tickets waiting for you, OK babe, ciao!

That was it, he had answered the phone and before he had a chance to say hi Dave megamouth Spleen is spewing non-stop blah, blah, blah!  

Edward Albee was a born misfit and highly revered Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. His play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe trashes the myth of the perfect American family and shreds 60’s conjecture on life, love and domestic codification to bits. 

Albee’s writing style has been labeled absurd realism— the settings, dialogue, locations, and conflicts are everyday stuff, but the mainstream certitude of the opening scenes eventually nosedives into mayhem and the illusion of certitude crumbles, leaving the characters of his plays in an empty, uncaring universe. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe is a paragon of absurd realism.  

At 6 PM Henry and Lucia dress to go out, she puts on a strapless black dress and wraps up in a light shawl, he wears faded, ripped blue jeans and a white oxford shirt. They walk the short distance to 104th Street station, walking down the steps into the subway tunnel, inside there's a bum passed out in a pool of vomit on the cement floor, Lucia who has a nose like a Bluetick Coonhound says, 

dios mios, the smell of vomito is awful! Henry trying to reassure her because he loves riding the subway says,  

the city’s new mayor, Giuliani, is cleaning the transit authority up! She rolls her eyes and says, 

tell the pendejo mayor to bring a mop and clean up the vomito! 

The train stops at Amsterdam Street Station and a knockout ebony gal in an evening gown boards, gently picking up her viola from its case, playing a freaky, melodic version of Duke Ellington’s Never no Lament. Henry nudges Lucia and says, 

you won't find entertainment like this riding in a taxi, you get a Rastafarian driver blaring Reggae on his radio. She’s heard enough and says, 

you love the subway, I got it bebe! 

They exit at Canal Street Station in Soho and walk 7 blocks to Chinatown for dinner at Chow’s Noodle House, John Chow, Henry’s pal, sells cocaine as a side-line and is a good fellow of the White Lantern, a branch of the Chinatown mafia. 

Chow greets the couple warmly as they walk into the noodle house, which is packed with Chinese people. The couple follow him to a small shuttered room with a circular table inside. Chow shakes Lucia's hand and says, 

your wife is exquisite Henry, I’m attracted to Latin women, Chinese girls don't have curves, they don't have much meat on them. I’m going to cook for you tonight, and have a drink on me! 

A Chinese waiter who has a red apron wrapped around his waist brings a bottle of Yamazaki 12, bottles of soda water, and a bucket of ice, setting the drink tray near the large table, Lucia says

bebe, the play starts at 9, don’t drink too much, and Henry answers, 

don’t worry the curtain won’t open till 10, let’s have a couple of drinks, Japanese booze is highly refined, you can’t get drunk on it.

The waiter brings a tray, placing plates of tea roasted duck, potstickers, won ton soup, Buddha’s delight, crab fried rice and a pot of black tea in the middle of the round table, John Chow sits with the couple to eat, as they fill their plates Chow asks Henry, 

my friend, I have a few kilos of cocaine are you interested? 

Before traveling to Cuba he was the exclusive dealer to the Hassidic community in Brooklyn Heights. Younger Hassidic men enjoyed coking up before prayer, saying the coke made them feel closer to g-d! He answers saying,

if you remember, a group of Chinatown gangbangers threatened to kill me, they wanted me out of Brooklyn Heights which they thought was theirs. The risk just isn’t worth it anymore John. 

By 915 they have polished off the bottle of Japanese whiskey and are more than wasted, Henry has a review to write, so they thank John Chow and catch a taxi outside of the noodle house to Soho Playhouse, it’s 10 blocks or so, the driver is Palestinian and the Bedouin music of Ya Abayad is blaring from his radio. 

They make it to Soho Playhouse by 945, pick up their tickets and are seated in the 2nd-row, middle. In a few minutes the curtain rises for act 1— George and Martha a middle-aged couple come home from a faculty mixer at New Carthage College in New England. He is a washed-up associate history professor and she is the daughter of the college president. The booze-hounds and hot-blooded maladapts had lost their capacity to feel over the years and had found they could drum up a little passion by arguing violently. The arguments eventually evolve into fine-tuned verbal-sparing and weird gamesmanship. 

George pours a couple night-caps of rye whiskey and says, 

I'm tired, dear. It's late.

I don't know what you're tired about.

You didn't do anything today.

You didn't have any classes.

Well, if your father didn't set up

these god damn Saturday-night orgies—

That's just too bad about you, George.

Well, that's how it is anyway.

You didn't do anything.

You never do anything. You never mix.

You just sit around and talk crap.

Martha invites Nick and Honey over for a late-night drink. He’s an aspiring new biology professor and she is his withdrawn, humdrum wife. Martha hears a knock at the door, let’s the couple in and says,

Hi there.

Nick and Honey don’t know they are entering shark-infested waters and Nick says,   

We made it.

You must be our little guest. Just ignore old sourpuss here. Come on in kids. Just hand your coats and stuff to old sourpuss here. 

Well, perhaps we shouldn’t have come.

Yes, yes it is late.

Late? Are you kidding? Just throw your stuff anywhere and come on in. Anywhere, furniture, floor, doesn’t make any difference this place.

Nick, I told you we shouldn’t have come.

I said come on in, now for Christ sake come on in.

Oh dear, oh dear. 

George begins pushing drinks, double shots of rye whiskey on Nick and Honey. 

George and Martha rake Nick and Honey through the coals for the next 2 scenes, surgically interrogating the young couple, knifing through their moral certitude, discovering weaknesses and using the findings to sadistically roast the couple. George and Martha were dangerous to themselves and others. 

In the final scene, George announces they are going to play one more game— bringing up baby, riling Martha by saying their baby, who has supposedly died in a car accident hated her. 

Finally, after George and Martha have dragged the young couple through the wrath of hell-fire, Nick catches on and they go home, jumping out of the frying pan.

In the last scene George and Martha stair unblinkingly at their decaying life. The ending is an exorcism—George finally wins the war, as he kills off their imaginary son, exposing him as an illusion. At this point Martha is in pieces, whipped into submission. 

As the curtain drops, the audience applauds unenthusiastic, Henry looks at Lucia, who is taken back and somewhat shocked by what she has seen. Then as the playgoers walk towards the exits, a stagehand walks up to Henry and says politely, 

Mr. Lucowski Samatha Goldface, would like to speak with you in her dressing room, and Henry says, 

call me Henry!

The couple follow the stagehand to Goldface’s dressing room and walk-in without knocking. Samatha Goldface played Martha, as she shakes Henry’s hand she drops a 500 dollar bill in his shirt pocket and says, 

darling, I really, really, need a rave in HEADBANGER Magazine tomorrow! He smiles and says, 

I got ya Samantha!

The following morning Henry is up by noon, writing the review on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe.

Thumbs up and kudos to the cast of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe at the Soho Playhouse—Samantha Goldface as Martha is disturbing and terrific, Randal Wilcum’s George is gut-wrenching and brilliant, Danny Relish’s Nick, catches fire eventually, Cindy Spasm’s Honey, is a church mouse who whimpers and can't seem to roar. 

This take-your-breath-away play will put stars in your eyes as it disturbs you, it will be performed nightly at 9 PM, for the next year, maybe. Get out of your easy chair and go see it!

Lucia looks over Henry’s shoulder, reading as he types and says, 

You're a whore, Lucowski!