WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? To 23 April.

Liverpool

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
by Edward Albee

Liverpool Playhouse To 23 April 2005
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2pm
Runs 3hr 20min Two intervals

TICKETS: 0151 709 4776
www.everymanplayhouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 April

Far more than a superior repertory revival, this is world-class theatre.From the moment minimalist music saws out energetic phrases recreating the same old pattern, and married couple George and Martha lurch into their home, the pattern of excellence is set. Denise Black, all tipsy show in smart hat and frock, contrasts Ian Bartholomew's George (unlike his founding-father namesake not making the future but, as a history professor, studying the past), drably dressed with a slight, yet noticeable stoop.

Black's aware her opening talk about an old film is tipsy rambling, so the one moment she slows down, on a character's obsession with make-up, emphasises how appearances matter to Martha, college boss's daughter married to a so-so has-been of the academic world.

Early scenes are played with battling good humour, devised to survive daily life in a dead relationship. It makes the later bitterness a more notable added taste, arising from Martha mentioning her child to visiting young academy hunk Nick (arriving in the post-party early hours with apple-pie wife Honey). The games then acquire a viperish rapidity in Bodinetz's production. It never drags; three hours whiz by until grey light dawns on the spacious emptiness of Francis O' Connor's set - its bared higher levels, where blankness replaces wallpaper, reflecting the ruined emptiness of George and Martha's lives.

The play's more than a domestic tragedy. The initial near-bonhomie of George, a circling beast of prey when left alone with younger colleague Nick, soon scrapes away into a battle between the individual mess of human history and the cloned perfection promised, even in 1962, by Nick's Biology. This is very early in the sixties, really the fifties' final moments, and Nick is their perfect male hero, tall, blonde and assured. But there's a colder side, clear in the light touch on his wife's leg, a pre-determined warning to shut her up.

As the night goes on, all four performers show the neuroses surfacing, and as discussions about children become more prominent in the games-playing and conflicts, the questions of identity and the future sear to the surface. It's a psycho-bloody, brutal battle for survival and it's played with beautiful detail throughout.

George: Ian Bartholomew
Martha: Denise Black
Nick: Nick Court
Honey: Kaye Wragg

Director: Gemma Bodinetz
Designer: Francis O' Connor
Lighting: Natasha Chivers
Sound: John Leonard
Voice/Dialect coach: Terry Besson
Fight director: Bret Yount

2005-04-18 14:36:10