Theater Review—

‘Virginia Woolf’ Definitely Deserves To Be Seen

By Julie Stern

The Town Players of Newtown have taken on a very ambitious project in tackling Edward Albee’s drama of marital discord, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

This is a tough play to do, and an even harder one to watch, given that it is about people deliberately hurting one another. Director Larry Kinnear has done a fine job of eliciting powerful performances from his players, however, and this means the three-hour show moves at a pace that keeps patrons on the edge of their seats.

Along with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, Albee is a master at capturing the dynamics of emotional interaction. His characters don’t need guns and knives to hurt one another; they strike their blows with words, and like spectators at a tennis match, heads swivel in the audience as men and women say devastating things to each other.

For those who are not familiar with the Richard Burton-Elizabeth Taylor film version, the play takes place in the living room of a house on the campus of a small New England college. George, a middle-aged history professor and former department chairman, is married to Martha, the formidable daughter of the college president.

After an evening at one of her father’s parties, given to introduce new faculty members to the college community, Martha announces that she has invited a young couple over for drinks, despite the fact that it is already two in the morning.

The play deals with the rest of that night, in which George and Martha indulge in brutally destructive “games” at the expense of their guests, as well as each other.

O’Neill and Miller are naturalistic playwrights, whose characters have clear motivations, and are easily understood, whether they behave badly or with quixotic nobility. Albee, on the other hand, is more obscure. The waters of George and Martha’s marriage are murky indeed, giving rise to many honest questions: What are they doing? Do they really have a son?  Why do they stay together?  Do they mean what they say? What is all this talk about “truth or illusion?”  Why does George sit and read aloud from Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West while his wife is in the kitchen playing “hump the hostess” with their handsome young guest (whose own wife is lying on the bathroom floor peeling the label off a brandy bottle).  

Most of us feel uncomfortable watching people claw at each other’s egos. Hopefully, we would leave the “party” once it became apparent that the host and hostess were going to let it all hang out. Of course with a play, it is not “really happening” (although in this case it is certainly emotionally realistic), and so it makes for a highly dramatic evening or afternoon.

Charlie Cowles and Suzanne Kinnear are well cast in the roles of George and Martha, and Gene Zingaro is outstanding as the studly but naively overconfident young biology professor. Debra Siberon rounds out the cast as his foolish young wife.

These four actors and their director have put a great deal of work into this production, and it deserves to be seen.

(Performances continue weekends until September 11 at The Little Theatre, on Orchard Hill Road in Newtown. Call 270-9144 for directions, ticket details or reservations.)