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

Manchester

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
by Edward Albee

Library Theatre To 23 November 2002
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 6,16,23 November 2.30pm
Audio-described 21 and Mat 23 November
BSL signed 6 November 7.30pm
Runs 3hr 15min Two intervals

TICKETS 0161 236 7110
Review Timothy Ramsden 28 October

Brilliantly acted, skilfully directed, this is a superb revival.Albee's domestic, slugged-out long night's journey into the small hours was always going to be a tougher test of the Library than its fellow American 50th season companion Neil Simon's The Odd Couple: longer, tougher and throwing all on to just four actors. Each rises to the occasion, and the script, magnificently. This is why we need a healthy, subsidised regional theatre.

As with his Death of a Salesman a couple of seasons back, which refocused attention on the family drama inside the American myth-take without at all reducing its scope, so here Library artistic director Chris Honer provides a startling, rich and independent view of a major US play.

Near the start George tells his wife Martha not to bray and she denies she ever does. Often, we don't believe her: the loud one, 50-something daughter of the university boss, married to a low-flying history professor who fights back against her contempt. The striking thing about Ishia Bennison's Martha, for all her provocative behaviour before and during the early-hours visit by young botany teacher Nick and his wife, is that we believe her. At times the voice rises, but then George Costigan's George can outdo a foghorn when he wishes.

Despite his crumpled look, head forward over hunched shoulders, hands in knitted-cardigan pockets, it's clear how much of the torturous games-playing George initiates, how insistent he is when it'd be better to stop. He's the one who names the games: Humiliate the host, Get the Guests. That bowed look can indicate not only defeat but a creature of prey – like the model puma stuck in a corner of their room - looming over a vulnerable psyche.

Which generally belongs to the visitors. From their first appearance framed in the doorway, Sally Bretton's Honey and Noah Huntley's all-American hunk Nick are pallid, clothed in unassertive colours with fashion-mag. hairstyles. Bretton shows the hysteria beneath the young wife's smiling sociability as she grows increasingly inebriated, gangly limbs and mouth muscles seeming to whirr out of control, till she finishes up prone across the sofa, an inversion of her opening party-polite posture.

Huntley's young academic gives George an invigorating run for his temper- the dislike of the older, messy History man for the confident young future-perfectability scientist is (perhaps because we're further down the cloning line George abhors) one of the play's more dated features.

What's now clearer than in the play's own Kennedy era is the way George and Martha's home on her daddy's campus in not just an antidote to The American Dream (title of Albee's previous play). It becomes an image of a nation where freedom exists within a tightly paternalistic authority, distorting human relationships: Martha makes the point Nick'd never have gone upstairs rumpy-pumping with her, almost twice his age, if she'd not been the president's daughter.

This is a major revival, finely performed and with an outstanding portrait of curdled self-hating fury from Costigan.

Martha: Ishia Bennison
George: George Costigan
Honey: Sally Bretton
Nick: Noah Huntley

Director: Chris Honer
Designer: Judith Croft
Lighting: Nick Beadle
Sound: Paul Gregory
Voice coach: Tim Charrington
Fight director: Renny Krupinski

2002-10-31 07:01:55