With new plays tending to run 80 to 100 minutes with no intermission -- perhaps a concession to the shortened attention spans of the social media age -- Edward Albee’s three-hour Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? from the middle of the last century sticks out as an anomaly on contemporary stages.
Still, the sharp-tongued domestic drama, set in the drunken wee hours at the New England home of a failed college professor and his bitter wife, can be riveting in its intensity and whiplash-inducing shifts of tone.
The Classics Theatre Project exists to put on the socially conscious plays of Albee’s era and predecessors like Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams who also dived into the downsides of the modern human condition. There’s nothing overtly wrong with Classics’ new production, yet somehow it seems dated. Are hysterical pregnancies still a thing? Nowadays, the politically correct term is a false or phantom pregnancy.
At last Sunday’s matinee, Diane Box-Worman’s performance as Martha, daughter of the college president, stood out.She’s one of those actors that doesn’t become the character; the character becomes her. There’s no wasted effort. It helps that she gets some of Albee’s best lines.
“If you existed,” Martha says to her ineffectual husband, George, as things begin heating up in the first of three acts, “I’d divorce you.”
Terry Martin plays him as the simp she accuses him of being -- deliberatively chewing over the dialogue in hushed tones -- so it’s extra noticeable when George snaps out of his passive shell to fight back. A disappointed Martha had hoped he would rise through ranks of the history department and take over the small college in fictional New Carthage. Turns out it’s not in him.
Their bruising relationship gets put on full display for Nick (John Cameron Potts), a new and ambitious young professor, and his mousey wife, Honey (Devon Rose). Martha has invited them over for a drink, which turns into many, after a faculty party. It’s already midnight, the hour at which it’s said nothing good happens after. Virginia Woolf provides plenty of evidence.
Potts gives a restrained performance, at least until things start to get really out of hand. He’s a confident but careful climber. Honey is not as naive as she at first appears, and Rose does a great job of gradually peeling off the character’s outer ditziness.
Part of the reason that Virginia Woolf is so long is that Martha can’t stop talking -- or “braying” as George puts it. After returning home from the party in the first scene, she declares, “What a dump!” Then she spends endless minutes pestering George about what movie the line is from.
It’s a precursor to the extended, often brutal narratives -- some true, some fictional -- that take up the bulk of the play. Running jokes abound, including which department Nick works in (biology, not math, appropriate as George suggests late in the marathon that they’re getting down to the marrow). As Virginia Woolf continually veers between humorous banter and mean-spirited confrontation, even the comedy has a savage edge.
Albee is crashing European absurdist theater into the new American realism of his time as George and Martha play mind games with each other in front of the guests. Phoniness became a major concern of mid-20th century writers, with J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye as the model.
Beneath the debilitating verbal hijinks, we’re led to believe Martha truly loves George, he’s maybe even in the more powerful position in the relationship. After three acts and two intermissions, anything’s possible.
Details
Through Oct. 24 in the Stone Cottage at the Addison Performing Arts Centre, 15650 Addison Road. $20-$25. theclassicstheatreproject.com.
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