One faded living room. Four people. Stacks of history books and LPs. Not a typical setting to hold the attention of an audience for 3½ hours.
Elizabeth McGovern as Martha and Dougray Scott as George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | Photo © Johan Persson
But here’s Edward Albee’s renowned 1962 autopsy of a middle-aged marriage which is long past its best. With this striking production, the audience is silently spellbound throughout.
The plot – under-achieving history professor George and his unsatisfied wife Martha bicker and play mind games with each other and with a seemingly conventional young couple Nick and Honey during a night of copious drinking – appears straightforward, but Albee’s coruscating dialogue is blackly comedic, unpredictable and compelling.
Under Lindsay Posner’s focused direction, the pace is taut and the stakes are high. Paul Wills’ dark set – all oppressive charcoal-grey walls, drab unkempt furniture, and bottles of booze discarded under chairs – adds to the claustrophobic feel.
The cast of four works beautifully together. Elizabeth McGovern’s Martha is mercurial, constantly testing, at times almost bipolar with rage.
Charles Aitken as Nick is initially taut and upright as a nutcracker, before descending into conflicted drunken loucheness.
Gina Bramhill’s Honey likewise starts as the “model” wife, gradually losing all inhibition and ending as a broken shell. But the revelation here is Dougray Scott as George, veering constantly from fusty invisibility to overbearing showman.
His protracted laugh conveys everything between anger, self-loathing, mocking and, just occasionally, amusement.
And when all the monstrous fighting is over, in the final moments of the play, we are left with a couple we newly care for.
The production runs until 11th February.
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Reviewer: Steve Huggins
