Who’s Afraid?

A galvanizing portrait of domestic discord in Edward Albee's classic

9/16/10 9:26 AM

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Image courtesy of the Firehouse Theatre

’ll admit it: I went to see Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, at the Firehouse Theatre in Richmond, with a tiny bit of trepidation. I was excited to see a genuine classic—the 1962 Edward Albee play won both the 1963 Tony Award and New York Drama Critics Award for best play, not to mention the Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama (though that decision was overruled, curiously, by the Pulitzer Advisory Committee after they objected to the play’s profanity and sexual content). Yet, I also knew that it was an utterly grim story of marital discord and lost promise, having seen not the play but the 1966 movie starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Watching those two heavyweights rip emotional holes in one another left me stupefied—I’d never seen any performance so brilliantly raw and malicious.

Image courtesy of the Firehouse Theatre

Suffice to say, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is not for those who prefer light-hearted fare. This is a powerful play—about deep-rooted individual bitterness and its corrosive effects on a relationship, along with the fantasies that we sometimes weave to cope with abject disappointment—and the Firehouse Theater performance is impressively explosive.

In his notes, director Rusty Wilson calls Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf “one of the great plays in the American canon,” and adds that “until now I’ve not had the guts to go down the rabbit hole.“ Yet we can be glad he did, as this is theatre that is simmering and, well, unafraid, thanks principally to actors Larry Cook and Laine Satterfield, who play the principal characters, George and Martha, and show their chops in demanding roles.

George is a mild-mannered history professor at a small, northeastern college whose career has fizzled out, much to the anguish of his ambitious wife. Martha, the daughter of the school president, is loud, blowzy and brazen. As the play begins, the two have just returned to their home after a boozy faculty party—and with fresh drink in hand, Martha informs George that another couple, a young biology professor named Nick and his wife, Honey—will soon be arriving for a visit.

This news sets off George, and within moments we begin to see that this is no placid, tweedy collegiate couple at all. Rather, the two quickly morph into what we can assume are their default domestic roles—that of mongoose and cobra, each intent on striking at the other, repeatedly, for past grievances. Martha emasculates George for his Milquetoast personality and failed career. George rails at Martha for being a loud-mouthed lush with loose morals. But the big issue—monstrous in its implications—is their son, who is supposed to be arriving for his 21st birthday. It is the topical fuse that, once lit, burns holes in the souls of these antagonists. And the melodrama all plays out in front of the naïve Nick and Honey, who are alarmed at first and then dragged into this living-room maelstrom themselves.