Next time you get invited round for drinks by a couple you meet at a party, think twice. Because if Nick and Honey’s experience is anything to go by, you could be emotionally scarred for life.
Welcome to Edward Albee’s award-winning Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? currently playing at Oxford Playhouse, their first in-house production for 20 years READ ABOUT THE WORLD PREMIERE HERE and therefore a big deal.
Set over one alcohol-sodden night, suffice to say all hell breaks loose
But thanks to Playhouse CEO and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? director Mike Tweddle, the drama keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout, no mean feat considering there are two intervals.
Set over one alcohol-sodden night in married couple Martha (Katy Stevens) and George’s (Matthew Pidgeon) New England college campus house in the early 1960s, suffice to say all hell breaks loose.
And we, as a captive audience can only squirm in our seats as the party unravels at neck-breaking speed and Martha and George’s extraordinarily vitriolic, mental and verbal sparring match begins.
we are witness to the horrifying reality of their dysfunctional, acerbic and destructive marriage, as the nightmare begins
So how does this come about? Martha, the frustrated housewife and unhinged daughter of the college president, and her history professor husband George, meet younger couple Nick (Ben Hall) and Honey (Leah Haile) at a faculty party, and ask them back for a drink.
The 2am drunken start doesn’t help, but while at first George and Martha seem rather eccentric, if volatile and outspoken, they soon show their true colours. Poor Honey (who we loved) and Nick are then witness to the horrifying reality of their dysfunctional, acerbic and destructive marriage, and the nightmare begins.
Despite continually trying to leave, Martha and George draw them into their web of venomous lies, vitriol and deception in this no-holds barred domestic drama which leaves takes the audience on an emotionally exhausting and completely enthralling roller-coaster ride of a play.
Like flies in a web we are party to their shocking and continuous stream of barbs, frustrations and insults, their secrets pouring out in a poisonous flow of infidelity, revelations and vicious, casual cruelty
Like flies in a web we are party to their shocking and continuous stream of barbs, frustrations and insults, their secrets pouring out in a poisonous flow of infidelity, revelations and vicious, casual cruelty.
Huge praise then to the four actors on stage, Martha and George’s fast-paced diatribe only increasing in tempo as the play goes on, thanks to the cracking script, as we winced. The games we play!
There will be no plot spoilers here, but safe to say that in the last dying stages of the play we finally get to the source of George and Martha’s unhappiness, their Achilles heel finally laid bare with excruciating momentum.
It’s not an easy watch, but Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? leaves no prisoners, and the immense skill set of the actors means that we are invested throughout, despite its 3+ hour performance.
Massive respect to Mike Tweddle then for reinvigorating this stalwart American classic and reinstating in-house productions at Oxford Playhouse with such intent
And while it does feel dated, thankfully times moving on in terms of respectability, women’s independence, fertility treatment and tolerance levels, Mark Tweddle’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is as explosive now as it was then.
Massive respect to Mike Tweddle then for reinvigorating this stalwart American classic and reinstating in-house productions at Oxford Playhouse with such intent. It’ was a night we won’t forget.
EDWARD ALBEE’S WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? is at Oxford Playhouse until March 7. BOOK HERE
