'Woolf' has big teeth, big tragedy and big talent

JULIA TIERNAN/YH This confrontation between George (David Steib, PC '99) and Nick (Nick Bagely, ES '99) is just another nasty element of Albee's 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.'

During the second act of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Megan O'Sullivan's, PC '01, character Martha
muses resignedly on her marriage to the impotent George (David Steib, PC '99): "Something just snaps and you don't give a damn anymore." Two and a half hours
of sarcastic baiting
and bilious flirting will make you feel the same way.

Of cou-rse, that's not fair. Woolf, directed skillfully by Eileen Gibson, MC '00, has a lot to offer, not the least of which is the treat of watching a fine ensemble cast tackle an accessible text. Albee's play is perfect for college theater; not only is it bitingly funny and cerebral enough to satisfy the bookish, it's actually about college. Well, professors at least.

Martha and George return home drunk to their New England living room from a faculty schmooze-fest, where they met Nick and Honey (Nick Bagley, ES '99, and Vanessa Wolf, BR '01), a younger Midwestern couple recently employed by the college. It turns out that Martha has invited the pair back for some late-night drinks, much to George's chagrin. Upon the guests' arrival, he affects a mercilessly condescending tone, provoking a bourgeois power struggle between Martha and George.

For every one of her husband's cracks about her alcoholism, Martha has a ready a rebuttal about his inadequacy, a trait which pervades every arena of his life. George is a failed novelist and unmoved lover, and as a history professor at the college run by Martha's father, he has yet to progress to an administrative position in the department. "You're nothing," Martha breathes viciously. Eventually, Nick, a biology professor, is sucked into the fray, leaving Honey to souse herself to sickness on the floral-patterned couch.

The performances are uniformly excellent, and they handily keep afloat a script that often threatens to drown in its own emotional trauma. But the actors not only drive home Albee's jagged insults, they nail the subtleties of awkward social interaction as well. Early on, when the two wives fondly recall a witticism from the party, Martha declares, "I thought I'd bust a gut laughing." But her enthusiasm is followed by a brief, surprising silence, as though the others each thought someone else would chime in. The moment is innocuous enough, but it sets a tone of discomfort that sticks around until the guests leave.

As Martha, O'Sullivan strikes a perfect balance between domineering bluster and genuine sadness, a mood which shows itself fleetingly before she chases it down with drink. When taunting George, though, she is malevolent, and her sexual anger finds an antithetical match in his icy effeminacy.

Steib captures George's academic ineffectualness in both movement and speech--his thin, angular frame leaves him dwarfed by his wife's grandiose personality. When Martha finally seduces Nick by the front door, George sits pointed toward the audience, reading. Her attempts to break his composure ("Look George, I'm necking with our guest!") result in the accidental ringing of the doorbell. "Honey, someone's at the door," is his deadpan retort.

Gibson develops the relationship between Honey and Nick more slowly. Upon their first entrance, they seem a reasonably affectionate pair, but the direction gradually reveals the emotional canyon separating them. Their attempt to cuddle on the couch is beautifully understated, and the effect is painful to watch. Bagley makes Nick's degeneration to macho adulterer believable, and Wolf is breezily oblivious as Honey.

By the third act of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the living room (elegantly designed by Roric Tobin, BR '01) has lost its charming middle-class simplicity. Things have gotten complicated: the half-empty glasses, broken bottle, torn books, and crooked chairs complement the red-eyed bitterness hanging on the characters' faces. Gibson does a fine job staging the contrasting moods; Martha's cackle, present in Act One to soften the verbal blows, has run out of gas by the end.

The problem is that there's simply no end to the violence. Rather than gradually mounting in intensity, Woolf is punctuated by a steady barrage of unpleasantries and confrontations. Martha's late declaration of "total war" against her husband seems ridiculous after the nightmarish evening we've witnessed. And though the effect is somewhat satirical, it leaves us exhausted and disengaged from an otherwise powerful production.

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