And I thought I would have to post this "analysis" from yesterday's New York Times. (Yes, the following is Copyrighted, 2005, New York Times.)
April 10, 2005
DIRECTIONS | BEHIND THE SCENES
Who's Afraid of Liver Failure?
"After a while you don't get any drunker, do you?" asks Nick midway through "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" The four characters in Edward Albee's 1962 classic, now being revived at the Longacre Theater, speak plenty of savage truths - but we all know that's not one of them. What shape would they really be in after drinking as hard as they do for the play's three hours? Eric Grode toted up the alcohol (actually spring water and tea) ingested during a performance and then spoke with two experts: Dr. Jay Lefkowitch, an anatomic pathologist at Columbia University Medical Center who specializes in liver diseases, and John Carca, manager and bartender at the Paramount Bar two blocks south of the theater. Herewith, a quick assessment of each character's intake.
GEORGE (played by Bill Irwin): male, 46, tall and wiry, drinks three glasses of bourbon on the rocks. "George has already had six times the 'safe dose,' " Dr. Lefkowitch said, citing a 1987 British study of alcohol consumption limits. That makes George the teetotaler of this group. Mr. Carca took a softer line: "If he's drinking regularly, he'd be O.K."
MARTHA (Kathleen Turner,) : female, 52, full-figured; 11.33 generous tumblers of gin. Both experts were shocked at that amount. "I don't care if that's for the whole day - she's drunk," Mr. Carca said. "Realistically, she'd black out by the end unless she's a functional alcoholic." Dr. Lefkowitch said that amount, if ingested regularly, qualified as a "cirrhosis-producing dose."
NICK (David Harbour): male, 28, strapping; 7.75 bourbons on the rocks. "If he's a relative newcomer, and young and healthy, he doesn't have as much baseline metabolic equipment," Dr. Lefkowitch said. "So he'll get drunker faster. Martha's going to have to drink more than him to keep up with him."
HONEY (Mireille Enos): female, 26, petite; 5 snifters of brandy before taking a bottle to the bathroom. "She's the novice," Dr. Lefkowitch said, "so she's going to get into trouble, with resultant vomiting, incoherent speech, etc." Though Honey runs offstage to throw up at the first intermission, Mr. Carca had a hard time believing she'd be around for the next two acts: "If she's not used to drinking, she'd be ready to go to sleep at that point. She would probably remember throwing up and nothing more." In this play, that might make Honey the luckiest character of all.
