Knowing his wife is drunk and quite lewd, he asks her to behave herself when they arrive, and when the doorbell rings, he warns her to refrain from mentioning their child to their company. George is disturbed because she did so without consulting him first, prompting Martha to launch into the first of many loud and lengthy tirades during which she taunts and criticizes him. Martha announces she has invited a young couple-Nick (George Segal), a young, good-looking, newly appointed instructor, and his mousey wife Honey (Sandy Dennis)-to join them for late-night drinks. on a Sunday morning, and they have returned from one of her father's Saturday night gatherings.
George (Richard Burton) is an associate professor of history who has turned to alcohol to deal with his vituperative, vicious wife Martha (Dame Elizabeth Taylor), whose appetite for administering abuse knows no bounds. Turning the underbelly of bourgeois academia into a microcosm of human relationships in all their arduous complexities, it's a harrowing descent into the private lives and painful secrets of two couples thrown together for an evening. One literate and profane night in the pathological marriage of two tortured souls, a middle-aged New England associate professor and his carping wife. The ultimate abuse comes in the form of talk of George and Martha's unseen sixteen-year-old son, whose birthday is the following day. As the evening progresses, Nick and Honey, plied with more alcohol, get caught up in George and Martha's games of needing to hurt each other and everyone around them. Late one Saturday evening after a faculty mixer, Martha invites Nick (George Segal) and Honey (Sandy Dennis), an ambitious young biology professor new to the university and his mousy wife, over for a nightcap. George being an associate history professor in a New Carthage university where Martha's father is the President adds an extra dimension to their relationship. This verbal abuse is fueled by an excessive consumption of alcohol.
George (Richard Burton) and Martha (Dame Elizabeth Taylor) are a middle-aged married couple, whose charged relationship is defined by vitriolic verbal battles, which underlies what seems like an emotional dependence upon each other. A bitter middle-aged couple, her derisive of his lowly position at a New England college, ask a new colleague and his wife over for drinks, and use them to fuel anguish and emotional pain toward each other through a distressing night.