If you want to really wound someone, physical violence is just too elementary. Tongues as sharp as knives are far more treacherous. Why, pair a caustic tongue with a cruel imagination and a person's very psyche can splinter across a living room floor as you watch.
Welcome to Edward Albee's playpen.
Currently playing at the Wilbur Theater before tackling Broadway in mid-March, Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" crackles with intensity. Incendiary and allegorical (the leads share the names of our nation's first president and his wife), the play deconstructs two marriages, namely that of impotent college professor George and his sadistic wife, Martha, and that of another less important couple.
The lead roles require such dynamism that it took Albee, who many liken to Samuel Beckett, over five years to cast the roles for this current revival. This will be only the third production of the play ever to appear on Broadway. The original production attacked Broadway in 1961, and was met with shock at its overtly sexual overtones.
Thus, it was no shocker when Broadway's latest Mrs. Robinson, Kathleen Turner, won the coveted role of Martha. The happy surprise was the casting of New York funny man Bill Irwin as George, a move which took many aback. It shouldn't have. This emotional fireball of a script is lathered in comedy. This particular production, directed by Anthony Page, thrives on it. A
veteran Albee interpreter, Page directed Albee's latest production, "The Goat or Who is Sylvia," in London's West End this past summer.
The play begins in George and Martha's living room, a restrained, heavy wood set designed by John Lee Beatty. The time is late one evening after a faculty party. At first, George and Martha seem like any other boring and dissatisfied older couple.
Only once Nick (David Harbour) and Honey (Mireille Enos) arrive, providing them with ammunition for their venomous barbs, do the real games begin. Have you ever played, "hump the hostess", "humiliate the host", or "get the guests?"
Twisted, biting, and sardonic, Albee's script is nothing short of a playwright's wet dream.
To afford a brief example, the four lushes like their liquor, and at one point George says to Martha, "That's a habit you have: chewing your ice like a cocker spaniel." She responds, "If you existed, I'd divorce you."
But script aside, it is Irwin's characterization of George's ineffectual history professor which makes this production unforgettable. Martha clearly preys upon any affection George shows her, yet Irwin doesn't sway to her punches. Rather, he uses his lines wisely, slyly, enriching moments that even Richard Burton's distinctive Hollywood George overlooked in the 1964 film version. Tiny words wreak havoc as they fall from George's mouth. He polishes his glasses and you wonder how they haven't cracked from his intensity.
Turner's performance, meanwhile, lacks that carefully nuanced feel. It's not that she doesn't earn her keep: indeed by the curtain call she was clearly exhausted. But the role seems to come more easily to her. And, in a way, that small advantage is unforgivable.
Why should she get off easier than Irwin?
It's an odd feeling, wanting to judge Turner's performance by Irwin's, yet due to their characters' Darwinian attitudes, it can't be helped. Throughout the play, she should be diving teeth-first into the intricacies of her role, yet instead she floats by on mere adequacy. By the play's conclusion, she barely seems wrecked when George has literally killed a part of her.
At least her chemistry with Harbour's Nick fogs up the stage. The possibility of their affair is palpable and dangerous - for Nick that is. Harbour's genuine desire for Martha humanizes her in ways that Turner has yet to find for herself. He also helps define George's role, his heartthrob good looks a foil to Irwin's nerd. Yet as the play wears on, Nick's confidence and egoism weigh him down until he appears oafish instead of suave. Points for George.
Oh, but poor Honey. She has no clue about the sexual games being played in her midst. Refreshingly, Enos veers away from the traditional ditzy blond associated with the role, instead using a thick Midwestern accent to convey her na??vet?©.
The three more aggressive parts could have easily bulldozed her into oblivion, but Enos retains a firm stage presence. And a good thing too, since it is a successful Honey, an average homemaker, which tethers this show to a reality the audience can relate to. We're not all brilliant professors, but we've all blindly loved something in our lives.
Of course, her blind love for Nick isn't even nearly enough. It's shallow, and Albee tears it down with his gigantic dramatic wrecking ball otherwise known as Martha.
All of his productions challenge the status quo, and occasionally they prove too bold for the times. When "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" first appeared on Broadway in 1961, with such legendary talents as Arthur Hill and Uta Hagen in the lead roles, the Pulitzer Prize committee refused to award the prize that year, rather than give it to Albee. Not to be overlooked, "The Goat or Who is Sylvia" addressed the taboo of a man sleeping with a barnyard animal.
In "Woolf"s case, Albee's social criticism of marriage has not weakened in the past four decades. Even with Turner only performing at half-speed, the show shocks the heart.
It's amazing, the capability and willingness a human being has to hurt his fellow human. It's frightening, watching those who live for it. But make no mistake: Martha and George love each other.
They love each other harder and deeper than Nick and Honey will ever know, so much so that they appear animalistic in their love. They rip off the veil of American domesticity and, as George would say, get down to the marrow of things.
