Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee.

Directed by Andrew Hall, Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall, London SW1, until 9 May 2009



Just in case you’ve never seen this landmark domestic drama, (the Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor film version must be available on DVD somewhere); George, a weary, cynical and alcoholic history professor, and his wife Martha, the cynical, weary and alcoholic daughter of the university’s president, invite campus newcomers Nick and Honey for ritual humiliation over very late night drinks. Nick is a self-assured young science professor trapped into marrying Honey by her false pregnancy – she swallows consoling amounts of cognac and makes many visits to the bathroom during the unfolding of the play.

What follows is a series of drink-fuelled games familiar to the older couple, Humiliate the Host, Get the Guests, Hump the Hostess; well-rehearsed exchanges in front of strangers to shock and awe. It’s academic sado-masochism driven by boredom, and it’s terrifying.

Thanks to its frank language, the first performances of Virginia Woolf caused much upheaval in the polite US society of the 1960s. One reviewer at its first staging in October 1962 dismissed it as ‘four characters wide and a cesspool deep’. The idea that middle-class people could be so abusive disturbed those who placed apple-pie over intellectualism in the American dream.

Matthew Kelly, Tracey Childs, Mark Farrelly and Louise Kempton do exceptional work drawing us into their intimate duelling matches. The Trafalgar Studio’s eyeball-to-eyeball acting space assists the sensation of George and Martha’s marital claustrophobia, although I’m glad I wasn’t in the front row for their most intense gladiatorial exchanges.

The spouse baiting follows its familiar pattern with much mutual relish of each sharp attack. But when Martha begins Bringing Up Baby, George realises things are getting down and dirty and his response takes them into dark uncharted territory.

Albee has tinkered with the script over the years. When he heard about this Lichfield Garrick production he asked that they play his latest tweaked version. According to one member of the cast, he’d made changes on every page, which meant some fast relearning.

Is it shocking to us 40-odd years on? Maybe not if you watch the kind of verbal and physical abuse TV fight club umpires like Jerry Springer encourage. Unlike the halfwits who go on reality television, Albee’s people give psychological abuse an artistic expression of the highest kind.

When dawn breaks, the young people have gone, and all the drink has run its course, George and Martha gently resume a fond truce. Their kind of order is restored, until the next staff intake.

It’s a delicate balance – but that’s another Albee story.

Bill Bingham – April 2009