As for guiding and pacing the actors, Bergman later suggested that Virginia Woolf did not even need a director. “If they are very good actors, they will find it,” he said. “They will find a rhythm of their own. I’m sure of that. I am convinced. It’s not so difficult. You can read [the play]—and it’s all there.” Ten years later, Bergman would write and direct Scenes from a Marriage, initially produced for Swedish television and, eventually, presented as a film in the United States. It is not hard to see the DNA of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? written all over it: Scenes anatomizes what is by all appearances an ideal marriage as it slowly deteriorates. As the frustrated wife becomes less tolerant of her husband’s egotistical buffoonery, the couple’s arguments grow increasingly bitter and more honest until, eventually, they divorce.
In New York, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? played a total of 644 performances, all of them sold out. The production won a Tony Award in 1963 for Best Play, and Hagen and Hill each won Tonys for Best Actor and Best Actress, as did Schneider for his direction. The New York Drama Critics’ Circle awarded it best play. Then came a big slap in the face: in May 1963, the Pulitzer Board of Trustees announced that there would be no prize for Drama that year. This was a direct and intentional snub of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?--the only play nominated that year in a season that included the Broadway production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Thousand Clowns, and Beyond the Fringe.
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