Hello Friends,
Tonight, I sat in the audience and watched a masterpiece unfold on the stage in front of me. Edward Albee’s work, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is, in fact, a masterpiece. The work originally opened on Broadway on October 13, 1962, and it won the Tony Award for Best Play that year. It was also considered for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize. And now, exactly 50 years later, on October 13, 2012, Albee’s award-winning play opened again. This production originated at Steppenwolf in Chicago, and I’m so glad it didn’t stay in Chicago, because it might be the best piece of theatre I have seen all year. If you haven’t seen it yet, I implore you. Please go and see it. You absolutely must. It’s divine.
The plot of Albee’s piece is seemingly trivial. It’s a play about nothing. There is a couple, Martha and George, who are living in a small college town and have just arrived home from a party. It’s very early in the morning. They are bickering, when Martha announces that they are having guests. These guests turn out to be Nick and Honey, a younger married couple who have just moved into town. Nick is a new Biology professor at the college where George is a History professor; the college president is none other than Martha’s father. The party begins a bit awkwardly as the couples get to know each other, and as the liquor begins to flow, the party evolves into a nightmare where all the secrets that should be kept private within a marriage are laid out to bare. Nick and Honey do a little sharing of their own, and by the end of the evening, I can’t say what ends up more destroyed, the individuals themselves, or their marriages.
There have been many remounts of Virginia Woolf? since it first premiered, but you would be hard pressed to find a better cast than this one. Amy Morton plays one of the more understated Martha’s that anyone has ever seen. Martha is usually louder, bigger, and angrier, but I believe Morton’s performance was honest, and deep. Morton has proved that bigger isn’t always better. Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Tracy Letts plays George to perfection. His George has a long end game, and although he seems quiet and spineless at the beginning, he slowly gathers up steam to beat Martha and everyone else in the room. Letts is the villain and victor that you never saw coming. Madison Dirks brings a formal and discomfited Nick to the stage. When I first read the play, I wasn’t sure how I felt about Nick as a character; but when I saw Dirks enter the stage, I knew he was just right. And Carrie Coon is to be applauded for her fantastic portrayal of Honey. She brought much of the humor, and was as honest as anyone I’ve ever seen on stage.
The relationship between George and Martha is clearly a complex one, and no more so than in this rendition. It is absolutely clear that these two characters love each other very much. In other productions, Martha can be a heartless monster, and the audience is left trying to figure out why George hasn’t left her. But in this production, not only does George give as good as he gets, they are as in love as any couple living this way can be. Letts and Morton have an unbelievable partnership in this play, and they work together with ease. A special acknowledgement must be made to Carrie Coon, who plays Honey. Throughout the piece, Honey becomes more and more drunk, and less and less functional. I have never in my life believed with such assurance in a character’s on-stage inebriation. When Coon came out for the bows, I believed with all of my heart she was going to stumble in, having consumed an entire bottle of brandy on stage. And on she stepped, graceful, in control, with her wits about her, albeit being emotionally exhausted (as they all obviously are). The power of theatre really worked tonight.
What makes this play so incredible is the vulnerability and honesty the audience is privy to from beginning to end. There is a phrase in Mexico called “pena ajena” and it refers to the embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation. This piece is the embodiment of that phrase. It’s such a heartbreaking show to watch, and you may find yourself wanting to go home and reconcile your differences with the people you care about. It seems so rare these days to see such a wonderful depiction of some of the more hidden aspects of human life, without a big political or personal agenda stamped all over the work. This play lets the audience make up their mind about what they’ve seen, and everyone walks away with something different.
I can’t say enough positive things about the acting work, or the writing (although Albee being as revered as he is, it goes without saying) and the rest of this review will likely evolve into repetitive and endless gushing. I will stop here, and simply implore you to go and see this production. You can find more information at their website: http://virginiawoolfbroadway.com or you can stop by the Booth Theatre Box Office at 222 West 45th Street, between Broadway and 8th Ave. Please hurry, as this show is closing March 3rd. You won’t regret it, I can assure you.
**Author’s Note: The work is almost 3 hours long, and with strong language I would rate this show PG 13 at the least.
Live, Love, Learn,