By James V. Ruocco
In Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" human choice, human potential and the structuring of action through potentially dangerous game playing - "Humiliate the Host," "Hump the Hostess," "Get the Guests," "Bringing Up Baby" - lend accusatory voice, distinction and challenge to the playwright's stinging autumnal commentary about emptiness, illusion, deception, metaphor and more importantly, death-in-life.
Centering upon a dysfunctional married couple - George and Martha - and their invited, middle-of-the-night guests - Nick and Honey - the action of the play is tightly unified in time and place at the New England home of a college professor and his wife - in the early hours (2 a.m. to 5 a.m., to be exact) of a Sunday morning.
The invitation - in the guise of a friendly nightcap - sets the play in motion.
(the front door bell chimes)
Martha: "Party! Party!"
George (murderously) "I'm really looking forward to this, Martha."
Martha: "Go answer that door."
George: (not moving) "You answer it."
Martha: "Get to that door, you, (he does not move), I'll fix you..."
George: (fake-spits) ..."to you."
(door chimes again)
Martha: (shouting) "C'MON IN!!" (to George) "I said get over there!"
(Nick and Honey stand there dumbfounded)
Thus, the familiar dance of Albee's shatter-proof play begins.
With its wicked sense of humor, manic drunkenness, sexual unraveling and edgy tableau of candid, stacked verbiage, Yale Repertory Theatre's revival of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" plunges into overdrive with a unique explosiveness that taunts, teases and bites with the judgmental restlessness and crossfire intended by the playwright.
It's all here: the fantasy; the emasculation; the cruelty; the bloodshed; the hypocrisy: the absurdity; the championing; the vulgarity; the thrill; the escape; the truth.
Sizzling with sadistic brio, it achieves a flavor and identity all its own.
It is candid and cathartic.
It draws you in with caged, encouraged hallmark.
It deep dives into a terrifying abyss.
It snaps, barks, bends and tilts.
It juices your palate.
It allows the weight of the dialogue to drag you into submission.
It confronts reality with sorrow, loss, silence and uncertainty.
At Yale Rep, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" is being staged by James Bundy, an award-winning impresario whose directional credits include "Arcadia," "A Woman of No Importance," "Death of a Salesman," "Assassins," "A Delicate Balance" and "Hamlet." Here, Bundy is in his element.
Smartly attuned to the edgy counterbalance of Albee's dancing ideas, pitch and artfully arranged bloodbath, he creates a stirring four-character portrait of chaos and madness, coupled with a racing heart, a flaming intelligence and a dark determination that explodes across the Yale Rep stage and doesn't falter for one, single moment.
Directorially, this is a play that demands attention at every page turn. Otherwise, it simply cannot and will not work. It also needs a free-flowing, non-stop sense of fluidity, acidity and balance to keep the wheels spinning, the characters talking and the thrills, spills and chills coming at you full force from every possible angle.
What's wonderful about Bundy's staging of Albee's work is the contrasting openness, vibe and strongness he brings to the production along with a keen sense of certainty, frankness, hysteria and surprise.
His revival stirs the intellect. It's linguistic and tonal. It's intimidating and sexual. It's clever and brazen. It also creates a dangerous tension that needs to be there.
Divided into three acts - "Fun and Games," "Walpurgisnacht" and "The Exorcism" - "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" is largely dependent on the beats, the pauses, the hooks, the tilts and rhythms of Albee's writing.
There's also plenty going on in the minds of the four characters, all of which has to be etched, steadied and paced with a verbal souffle of push-pull leaps, clobbers, landscaping and pounding necessary to drive everyone over the moon and back again. Bundy, of course, succeeds swimmingly. His descent into the play's many arguments, conflicts, enticements and nasty game playing is engaged, blended, massive and maintained. He pushes the bar to the end point and ends "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" on a significant high - like no other.
As Martha, Rene Augesen brilliantly embodies the blousy, boozed-up, sharp-tongued character set loose for more than three hours in Edward Albee's slugfest arena. She's hungry. She's vicious. She's sexy. She's cornered. She's vulnerable. She's anxious. She's self-loathing. She's out for blood. It's a star turn on every level, mixed with the desolate sadness, deliberate anger and finger-pointing comebacks the character is famous for.
In the role of George, Martha's wounded, embittered intellectual husband, Dan Donahue is every inch as magnificent as Augesen, offering a hypnotic Chekhovian performance, prompted and shaped by well-matched bouts of desperation, exhaustion, awakening, in-bred destruction and acerbic verbal ping pong. Both he and Augesen are great stewards of Albee's language and like others before them, they deliver it with punch, acidity and wild abandon.
Nate Janis projects the cocky arrogance of youth with both the growing awareness and ripe, attractive sexiness the playwright envisioned for the role of Nick. It's a well-rounded turn of character ambition, confrontation, passion and entrapment that Janis taps into with appropriate chill, vigor, smarm and confidence. Emma Pfitzer Price deftly portrays Honey's giggly mania, her childlike innocence, her queer phobias and the shocking reality of discovering that she's one of the unlucky victims of the night's violence, carnage and twisted, hurtful mind games. Too much booze also turns Price's Honey into complete slush.
With Bundy orchestrating the game playing, the bitchiness, the mood swings and the rise and fall of all four characters, the ticks and beats of the play are completely in sync with Albee's successful, sardonic, in-your-face writing. Bravo!
The greatness of Edward Albee's astonishing 1962 drama "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" is ignited with punch-drunk awareness and mind-bending realism in Yale Rep's stellar mounting of this iconic, award-winning Broadway play.
The game-playing, the violence, the humor, the passion and inbred distain for marriage - all prevalent in the playwright's acerbic commentary - is fueled with weighty confrontation by director James Bundy who not only gives audiences the best play of the 2022 regional theatre season, but one that celebrates the verbal combat and cathartic slugfest of the four central characters with steadied destruction, vindication, vulnerability and vividly expressed ensemble.
This is theatre. Real, lavish, complex - breathtaking.
It's arguably one of American theater's great masterpieces as it wildly cuts loose to examine the dissection of an unhappy marriage with such flair and confidence, witnessing it will leave you drained, exhausted and disturbed.
Then again, that's the point of this arresting, involved, provocative night of truth-telling.
Photos of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" courtesy of Joan Marcus
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