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George, an unsuccessful professor of history, and Martha, his wife, the daughter of the president of a small New England college, return home early in the morning from a party for new faculty members. George and Martha are drunk when they enter and continue drinking throughout the rest of the play.
Under vicious remarks above him and his abilities she informs him that they now expect guests, a young and fresh lecturer and his wife. George gives way in a resigned realization of the inevitablity and so he mixes the drinks. As the young people appear, Martha begins with the play of the emotional disassembly. With a slowly but constant increased intensity she discovers Nick and Honey, the weakness of her husband, his incompetence, his failed career, his ridiculous physical constitution - short, she degrades him until on skin and bones. George is not able to defend himself, he only says that she should stop with her taunts. The young married couple stand this hell-fuss helpless opposite, Honey must vomit because of the alcohol-consumption. In the drunken orgy that follows, Martha and George engage in a harrowing battle to destroy each other, taking deliberate delight in pain and venom as they feed on each other's weakness.
In the second act, George strikes back and he uses Martha's tactics on the guests, by expansions of intimate details, and so Honey collapses. After that Martha turns erotic toward Nick and they disappear in the back-rooms.
As George hears that Martha has spoken about their son, the resolution matures in him to make finally a clear table. In the third act George forces Martha in front of the guests to notice the truth. Martha so far was a really strong woman, but now she collapses, the guests go home and Martha and George stay back without hope, empty and exhausted.
Games:
The play is a series of games and rules. The games are seriously playful imitations of the social games we play in our everyday life. The beginning games are comparatively harmless, then they turn to open adultery and finally to killing George and Martha's imaginary son.
"Lebenslüge" :
Martha and George have been married for some years, but both are disappointed about that, what has become of their hopes and plans. In this situation they have created together a "Lebenslüge", and both recognize the lie as a lie, but they themselves knowingly don't admit it. The son as a concretization of the "Lebenslüge" is to be seen as an allegory of the fulfilling mutuality, that you cannot find, but that you can persuade yourself. Albee's conclusion at the end is that even the finding of the truth does not lead to cleaning and new beginning.
Interpretation:
The central point is the conflict between George and Martha. Nick and Honey are more or less spectators and extras. Albee does not put hope on Nick and Honey as the hopeful generation, that in future commence everything better and morally more credible, but also in them is already placed the concurre, the innocence and the cowardice, before the truth.
George and Martha, trapped in their house and their lives together, attempt to find substitutes for the reality they have been trying to escape and deny, and at the end, after Nick and Honey have left, George and Martha are left with the reality they so feared, and that reality turns out to be marked by many affirmations (the many "yes's" in the dialogue) and the morning sun illuminating the real world they now must face together, alone.
I think that Albee's play is about truth and illusion fundamentally. The theme of truth and illusion from the last act is the strongest notion from the play that is presented. It is full of uncertainties, like life.
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