Jan. 20th, 2011 05:55 pm
Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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fiona_gradyWell, every actor should be afraid, I think, and every director too, because the plank has been raised so impossibly high, such a long time ago, and embedded forever in the collective memory of generations of theater goers. It seems impossible to even imagine the characters to be anything other than the ones created by those definitive performances of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, right? -
Yet, yesterday we saw a performance of "Virginia Woolf" so very different and so very powerful that the Canon seems to finally recede.
For many many years I was convinced that the warfare between George and Martha, their mutual bruising and abusing played out frankly and provocatively in front of two young guests is really a private sexual play - this is how they get their kicks, and luring and then humiliating their guests, making them unwitting pawns and then civilian casualties, is part of the game. In the end, in spite of the horrific blows and the emotional wreckage, it is George and Martha who stay together as a monolith, while the young couple seems to be disintegrating in front of our very eyes.
In many of his plays Albee rejects the bourgeois notion of what is proper and acceptable, and the moral (if ever there was an inappropriate usage of this word) of "Virginia Woolf" was that what might be unacceptable to you, is the very fuel that keeps other people's relationship hot.
But in this production, Tracy Letts' George and Amy Morton's Martha's warfare is just that - warfare. The long-held grudges, frustrations, annoyances finally burst to the surface, escalating, turning sadistic, reaching the point of no return and finally exploding. This is not a story of a couple who are playing a private game for kicks. This is an all too familiar story of two people who are tired of each other, who are habitually blaming each other for their failures, who hurt each other and almost draw blood, and yet cling to each other because there is nowhere else to go.
"Virginia Woolf" is often played a little bit as a Theatre of the Absurd; after all, everyone on stage is so very drunk, and it is so late in the night that it is almost early in the morning. This production is played straight, with full realism, as if this were a play by Arthur Miller, and yet the many layers of this unbelievably multi-layered, complex play were both revealed to the viewer, yet not fully explained. After all, some things are best left unexplained, as too close an observation might blind you.
Yet, yesterday we saw a performance of "Virginia Woolf" so very different and so very powerful that the Canon seems to finally recede.
For many many years I was convinced that the warfare between George and Martha, their mutual bruising and abusing played out frankly and provocatively in front of two young guests is really a private sexual play - this is how they get their kicks, and luring and then humiliating their guests, making them unwitting pawns and then civilian casualties, is part of the game. In the end, in spite of the horrific blows and the emotional wreckage, it is George and Martha who stay together as a monolith, while the young couple seems to be disintegrating in front of our very eyes.
In many of his plays Albee rejects the bourgeois notion of what is proper and acceptable, and the moral (if ever there was an inappropriate usage of this word) of "Virginia Woolf" was that what might be unacceptable to you, is the very fuel that keeps other people's relationship hot.
But in this production, Tracy Letts' George and Amy Morton's Martha's warfare is just that - warfare. The long-held grudges, frustrations, annoyances finally burst to the surface, escalating, turning sadistic, reaching the point of no return and finally exploding. This is not a story of a couple who are playing a private game for kicks. This is an all too familiar story of two people who are tired of each other, who are habitually blaming each other for their failures, who hurt each other and almost draw blood, and yet cling to each other because there is nowhere else to go.
"Virginia Woolf" is often played a little bit as a Theatre of the Absurd; after all, everyone on stage is so very drunk, and it is so late in the night that it is almost early in the morning. This production is played straight, with full realism, as if this were a play by Arthur Miller, and yet the many layers of this unbelievably multi-layered, complex play were both revealed to the viewer, yet not fully explained. After all, some things are best left unexplained, as too close an observation might blind you.
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