Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
Public issues erupt as private truths, sociologist C. Wright Mills tell us. That meditation leaps to mind with the remarkable production from the Publick Theater of the ferocious Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? currently galvanizing audiences at the Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theater.
Diego Arciniegas’s clarity of direction unleashes high voltage performances from a cast of four led by Tina Packer, whose Martha (to borrow from Dylan) makes love - and havoc - like a woman but breaks like a little girl. Fortuitously, Arciniegas also assuredly reins in these same actors enough so they stay on track to deliver Edward Albee’s play with all its fierce intelligence and jabbing wit.
Since the play’s debut in 1962 audiences have loved Edward Albee’s droll, yet down-and-dirty play for Martha’s acerbic wit, George’s humorous touché comments, and the witty, nasty bickering repartee of this couple whose marriage seems dangerously on the verge of coming apart. These are laughs, however, that are instructive rather than frivolous.
Albee is impelling us down a road whose end is the end of illusions. Fantasies Martha with George’s encouragement had bought into, are shredded and discarded. Their loss the playwright considers a good thing.
You can see this play as Albee’s telling educated Americans that they can be healed of their malaise by discarding the illusions we clutch onto about the world and our history as a country. Or, perhaps, you would prefer a more literal approach and view the play as a text book case of a dysfunctional couple living on the campus of a small New England college where he teaches history and she is a disgruntled wife and the daughter of the school’s president.
That decision of which way you want to look at the play comes upon leaving the theater. Watching the play in this intimate production, you succumb to the fact that you’re only going to be there for the ride.
The hour is late when George and Martha, already inebriated, return home from a reception for new faculty at the college president’s home. George is taken aback to learn that Martha has invited the new biology teacher and his wife to come along for a night cap. The drinking will go on for hours.
The studly Nick, with his eye on moving up the academic ladder, and the neurotic Honey, whose childishness grates on Nick more than he wants to let on, prove to be the perfect audience for the abusive psychological power games the brash, lusty Martha presses the more reserved George into playing. The games are a substitute for sexual excitement until later when they take on a more significant turn.
After George and Martha tear at each other’s dignity in an orgy of verbal sadomasochism, they turn on the new faculty couple.
In a prominent position is the portrait of Daddy, whose entrepreneurial skills and knack at accumulating wealth, makes him the patriarch, even in George’s home and certainly in the college overall. "He is the college," says George at one point; adding with a wry poke, "a God, we all know that." He casts a long shadow, but by evening’s end Martha and George, who had rejected being an organizational man to Martha’s dismay, are a little freer of him than they were before. "He does have beady eyes," says Martha scrutinizing the portrait. She’d been blinded by his importance; in reality he barely took note of her.
An electric performance from Tina Packer -- chomping on ice cubes, at times a monster, at other times painfully vulnerable -- gets the ball rolling. She’s well matched by the subtly portrayed, professorial George from Nigel Gore, who looks like a push-over, but is nothing but. Kevin Kaine gives a strong performance as the muscle bound, irritatingly self important Nick. Angie Jepson is less frail than one might have expected, but believable even so as a woman dodging pregnancy because of her fears of the pain of child birth.
Set designer Dahlia Al-Habieli gives the indulgent foursome plenty of room to flail about in with her wide-open set. (The bar’s a bit of a trek from the sofa and easy chair.) One clever touch is hanging the portrait of Martha’s father front and center (interestingly you’re never conscious of it unless Daddy becomes the subject of the conversation).
Martha’s faintly ridiculous outfits - first a black chiffon pants suit with ugly flared slacks and then tights that no chubby lady should struggle into topped by a leopard print blouse perfect for a cougar - nicely reflect her character; as does the Alice in Wonderland head band on Honey - all good work from costume coordinator Susanne Nitter.
Nearly half a century later when it first played on Broadway Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is all too fresh. It’s frightening indeed to have to think that educated Americans have progressed so little in becoming a mature people.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? continues through October 24, 2009 at the Plaza Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St., Boston, MA. For more information visit www.publicktheatre.com.
