It's been a frustrating Smackdown, without a really exciting performance thus far. We've had the instantly forgettable, the blandly competent, the victim of a bad script, and the stunt performance. So thank the deity of your choice for Sandy Dennis, who is spectacularly good as Honey, a "mousy little type" who thinks she understands the games that George and Martha (Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor) play, but quickly finds herself in over her head. It's interesting that we're never entirely sure whether "Honey" is her name or a term of endearment; neither George nor Martha ever refers to her by name, and each time husband Nick (George Segal) addresses her as "Honey," it's just ambiguous enough that we can't come to a clear conclusion.
Honey and Nick arrive at George and Martha's home sometime after 2 am, after a Friday night cocktail party on the college campus where George and Nick are professors. As flaky as Honey may seem, it's clear almost instantly that she's the more socially capable of the two. "Isn't this lovely," she says, looking around Martha's untidy living room; when Nick says nothing, she whacks him across the chest and he chimes in, "Yes, very handsome." He'll echo her small talk in similar fashion throughout the early scenes of the movie.
Honey doesn't much like to talk about herself, though she's perfectly happy to talk about others. She tells both George and Martha things about Nick that he might have preferred she not mention, and vice versa. Nothing we learn about Honey, on the other hand, comes from her directly; it's all from Nick.
Honey is quick to figure out that George and Martha's inappropriate behavior is a form of game playing; as Martha flirts with Nick on the sofa, we see Honey in the background of the scene watching them, and noddling slowly as she starts to put the pieces together. And she's eager to play, too; she starts chiming in, often echoing George or Martha ("When's the little bugger coming home?") in an attempt to help push someone's buttons. By contrast, Nick doesn't really understand what's happening until it's all over.
Even after things have escalated to the point where she really should know better, Honey continues to encourage George and Martha (especially George), clapping wildly and chanting "violence, violence" at the dance hall, or refusing to let George be stopped even as he recounts her and Nick's most personal secrets. ("I want to hear this story," she says.)
But ultimately, Honey overestimates her ability to keep up with George and Martha's level of game playing; she is, as Nick tells us, "frail." She wants desperately to stop George's final stroke of cruelty against Martha -- a stroke that she has indirectly inspired with her questions about the ringing bells -- but is powerless to do so. She fully understands the rules of the game by now, and follows them even when she'd rather not; the desolation in her voice when she is forced to hand the final victory to George by telling Martha that she saw him eat the telegram is crushing.
Honey's a complicated character, not merely the tipsy ditz she often seems. She's smarter and more worldly than anyone in the room realizes (Nick underestimates her more than anyone, I think), but still too innocent and naive to imagine just how far George and Martha will push their neverending series of games. She's often used as comic relief, but her pain and grief in the final moments is, in its own way, almost as devastating as Martha's.
It would be easy for the actress playing Honey to overemphasize one side of her personality to the extent where other aspects are unconvincing. Sandy Dennis gets them all just right; every aspect of Honey feels real, and as contradictory as they are, they all feel like the same person. It's an astonishingly assured performance, by far the best of the '66 nominees.
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