Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
It’s entered the fabric of American culture. Rife with riddles, an anomaly like "who is deep throat?", I’m referring of course, to WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? This revival currently playing at the Longacre Theater is funny, very goddamn funny. At least to George and Martha, whose names, in case you didn’t get it, are identical to the first occupants of The White House.
As directed by Anthony Page and with an edited text, this production is still so long that by Act II we wonder if we’re in for LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT or is this just a Saturday Night Live skit gone awry. The marital bickering which begins at 2am after a night of drinking and brawling lasts until dawn. But what makes it fascinating is the brilliance of Albee’s dialogue, the colors and nuances of the verbal dueling, and the ambiguity of this marriage in which love and hatred are interchanged.
In the hands of this astonishing cast, the lines sling like arrows. Kathleen Turner especially is as provocative and commanding in her comedic delivery as she is in her emotional range. With George she is camp and sarcastic. But in manipulating their young guest, Nick, Ms. Turner, radiates the sexiness that exploded on the screen in BODY HEAT. Nor is she afraid to look her age. But that too is just part of the act. Martha is incapable of being real, her vulnerability appearing only at the very end. Similarly, Bill Irwin as George also puts it on, playing the clown while what he really feels is anger and hurt. As Nick, David Harbour has the right physicality, and mastery of this sophisticated dialogue. Mireille Enos plays his ditzy wife in Pucci-esque 60's fashion by Jane Greenwood. John Lee Beatty’s wooded living room and crowded book shelves house all of their dark lives.
Still, there’s no clear trajectory in WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, nor is there closure. Some lies are exposed, a riddle about a child is destroyed, infidelities are tested, but the terror of marriage remains jarring and opaque.
That’s This Week on Broadway. I’m Isa Goldberg.
