WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? To 13 May.
London
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
by Edward Albee
Apollo Theatre To 13 May 2006
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm & alternate Thu (2, 16 Feb, 2, 16, 30 March, 13, 27 April, 11 May) 2.30pm
Runs 3hr 10min Two intervals
TICKETS: 0870 890 1101 (booking fee)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 31 January
Illuminates a long, dark night of these souls.
Slugging it out over shots of bourbon, New Englanders George and Martha, history professor and university boss’s daughter, involve young academic couple Nick and Honey in their marital agonies and compensating fantasies. Edward Albee, already author of one-acter The American Dream, dissolved individual and national illusions in his 1962 long nightmare of a play that starts (after a more formal drinks-gathering) at 2am and ends with lamps being put out and the cold light of dawn illuminating drink-fuelled Martha sitting on the floor of her self-described “dump”, not running but certainly on empty.
Anthony Page’s fine production must be the funniest there’s been. In this games-playing world the humour helps show how George and Martha get by. Beneath the drink and the frustration fuelling Martha’s vituperative comments she and her husband can momentarily enjoy the game much as Godot’s tramps appreciate their linguistic flights.
Kathleen Turner’s Martha is an intelligent woman, nearing reality already in her tired, foot-dragging act 3 opening soliloquy. If it only lights on her completely in the final moments, when she answers the play’s eponymous question, it’s there throughout for George, administering drinks to others but rarely taking a tipple himself. He keeps his wit sharp, darting poisonously in from unexpected directions. Sometimes it’s all, or part, a joke, something Bill Irwin’s George visibly enjoys. But there are times it gets serious, especially his attack on biologist Nick’s clone-future. From the start his ageing, grey-haired, grey-clad figure uses the academic’s back-straightening, arm-waving shrug as a sign of acceptance, defensiveness or mockery: an image of someone caught in professional and domestic roles, struggling against becoming supine.
It’s at the sudden, abbreviated end of the dark middle-act, as George crashes his book against the door-chimes, Irwin most clearly shows George’s underlying anger. Such moments indicate that, for all Martha’s dominance in the marriage, George is Albee’s main focus.
The production’s enhanced by Mireille Enos’ empty-headed, edge-of-hysteria Honey, already intoxicated at her entrance, and David Harbour’s bullet-headed Nick, ungracious, unsubtle and increasingly aggressive as the drink takes hold in act 2. For the audience, nightmares are rarely so riveting.
Martha: Kathleen Turner
George: Bill Irwin
Honey: Mireille Enos
Nick: David Harbour
Director: Anthony Page
Designer: John Lee Beatty
Lighting: Peter Kaczorowski
Sound: Mark Bennett, recreated by Fergus O’Hare
Assistant director: Chris Rolls
2006-02-02 01:12:55