Before War of the Roses

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

by Edward Albee

directed by Larry Arrick

at the Hasty Pudding

through November 28

It would not be an exaggeration to call Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf home to the most vicious dialogue in the history of the American theatre. In 23 years of marriage, George and Martha have not only learned how to torment each other, they have learned to do it with style. These two don't just carp about character flaws or accuse one another of wrong-doing: each refutes the other's very right to existence. Early in the first act, Martha says to George, "I can't even see you...I haven't even been able to see you for years." Later, George dismisses Martha, willing her to "Vanish. Vanish."

George is a history professor at the New England college where Martha's father is president. After a faculty party, both come home drunk and mercilessly attacking each other: Martha thinks George is a failure, George tells Martha that she drinks too much and "brays" too much. Neither has any qualms about involving two innocent guests, Nick and Honey, in their crazy, dangerous games. They spend from midnight till dawn exposing any hidden truth they can uncover that will draw blood. The truth that remains veiled is that only people who once loved (or still love) each other very much would know how to destroy each other like this; only once, Martha alludes to this, "[George] who can make me laugh, and I choke it back in my throat; who can hold me at night, so that it's warm, and whom I will bite so there's blood...who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving me and must be punished for it."

At three and a half hours, the play leaves the audience in psychological and physical exhaustion. This is not to mention the demands it makes upon the actors (the original Broadway production had two sets of actors to split up matinees and evening performances). The Cambridge Theater Company has assembled a stellar cast for this most grueling of Edward Albee's plays. Sally Kellerman's Martha is everything she's supposed to be: funny, sensuous, scathing and just this side of schizophrenic.

David Ackroyd as George is the archetypal history professor, who speaks solemnly, holds forth portentously and submits wordlessly to his small-scale destiny. David Macdonald is suitably well-muscled as Nick, but isn't very convincing during his more intelligent outbursts. Patricia Dunnock is far too annoying and babyish as Honey for us to really feel the horror of her climactic drunken confession. It seems a mistake for director Larry Arrick to make Honey and Nick so ludicrously two-dimensional, for it undermines the true cruelty of George and Martha's manipulations if we feel Honey and Nick aren't worthy of anything better. Susan Santoian dresses Martha as too conspicuous a floozy; all that's missing is a feather boa.

This is not a play for the misty-eyed or faint of heart, but it is truly not nihilistic. What's magnetic about George and Martha is the double-edge nature of their emotions, and the fact that ultimately, they are not even sure they know themselves the way they know each other. Albee once said of the conclusion of Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf, "we must try to claw our way into compassion." The play begins and ends in darkness, and after the brutal glare of judgment intervening, it's an act of mercy to gesture towards a time to heal and recollect ourselves.