Sandy Dennis in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) - Supporting Actress Sunday

Academia and alcohol. Two acquired tastes -- both highly distilled and generally overpriced -- that seem like they should taste great together. But which rarely do. And, more often than not, the combination of the two make for all kinds of disastrous scenarios, discomfiting intimacies and disproportionate levels of liver (and spirit) damage. Should you doubt my authority on this subject, I refer you to the enduringly vivid, collective portrait of alcoholic academentia created by the ensemble in this week's featured film, most especially the work by...

...Sandy Dennis in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966)
approximately 30 minutes and 10 seconds
9 scenes
roughly 23% of film's total running time

Sandy Dennis plays Honey, a gregarious wisp of a woman who happens also to be the wife of the newest, youngest and (in all likelihood) most attractive faculty member at a small New England college.
Dennis's Honey is the sort of faculty wife who takes her job seriously, making certain that she's meeting and mingling with all the right people.
Indeed, it seems that Dennis's Honey has decided that her best defense is a good offense and that, by insinuating herself into the consciousness of her husband's colleagues, she might better keep track of her charismatic husband's wandering eye (as well as those wandering hands that seem so attracted to his well-toned physique).
Honey's instinct for politics, however, does not come matched with a strong stomach and the heady combination of the untempered booze and hot-tempered banter soon begins to take its toll, causing Dennis' Honey to make routine retreats from the field of battle to what George evocatively calls the "euphemism."
Sandy Dennis's approach to Honey is smart and vivid. Dennis establishes three main "tracks" for Honey: Honey's mask of social propriety (the clarity of which Dennis dissipates with each drink); Honey's inner turmoil about her relationship with her husband (the boil of which Dennis amplifies with each drink); and Honey's sharp, unconscious instinct for playing social games (the acuity of which Dennis maintains throughout).
To my mind, Dennis's greatest accomplishment in the role is that she effectively sustains the impression that Honey is disastrously outmatched by the team of George and Martha even as Dennis charts how adept Honey's instincts are in playing their game. (Martha may steamroll over both George and Honey in her lascivious pursuit of amusement with Nick, but it is the combined force of George and Honey that ultimately bring Martha crashing down.)
Dennis is a startling performer, an actress whose Method tic-ishness combines with her insectlike appearance to create extraordinary glimpses of anxious, despairing, elemental vulnerability. All of which works for Honey.
What also works for Honey is Dennis's capacity for demonstrating the apparent instinctiveness of the Honey's every move.
Rarely do we believe that Honey's in charge, or that she even has a clue what's going on, but this instinctiveness clarifies something essential about the character: in Martha and (especially) George, Honey has discovered people who speak her language. Honey may not be skilled as George or Martha in the sport of vicious manipulations and cruel fictions, but Dennis's Honey instinctively appreciates her own talent for such games.
Honey may not understand precisely what she's doing when she collaborates effortlessly with George in destroying Martha but, as she does, something within Honey comes alive. Dennis conveys this discovery with feral, vaguely terrifying clarity.
I don't know that I "like" Sandy Dennis's performance. (Her discomfiting twitches and gurgles instigate as much anxiety in me as they do in the character.) Nonetheless, I remain forever fascinated and amazed at the Sandy Dennis's skill in conveying Honey's depths, in terms both human and dramaturgic.