You'll find Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on every list of great American plays. Edward Albee’s 1962 masterpiece of biting remarks and weaponized adultery is vicious and hilarious, timeless and worth your time. But while plenty of companies take on the challenge, Portland Center Stage has mounted a production that puts even the 1966 Academy Award-winning film adaption—starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton—on the defense.
Who's Afraid is about unhappy flirts in 1950s academia, but it's also about the told-and-retold stories and dreams that bind married couples together.
You won't actually find British author Virginia Woolf anywhere in the work. The title comes from a pun, uttered at a previous party we never see, referenced at multiple points in the play.
For audiences who didn't grow up on Disney show tunes, the sing-song "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" mimics the tune of "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" a song from '30s cartoon Three Little Pigs. What was the original joke? Why Virginia Woolf in particular? It's not obvious. However, the phrase is emblematic in the way it's uttered: with merrymaking condescension in the first act, biting scorn in the second, and sorrow in the third. These are points on the emotional roadmap of Albee’s play.
Around two in the morning George (Leif Norby) and Martha (Lauren Bloom Hanover) return from a party at the home of Martha's father—who is also the president of the university where George teaches history. The couple needles and snipes at one another through a nightcap before Martha reveals that they're having guests. She’s invited a young couple that "Daddy" told her to welcome—a new professor Nick (Benjamin Tissell) and his wife, Honey (Ashley Song).
Pretending in front of their guests that they aren't in open emotional war was never an option, so Martha and George go at each other with increasing ferocity and a seemingly bottomless supply of alcohol. Snared in the marital drama unfolding before them, the younger couple takes in stories about their hosts' absent adult son and George's failed novel, which might actually divulge his own personal tragedies. In turn, Nick reveals private stories he and Honey share, while his young wife drinks more than she can handle.
Martha’s penultimate attack on George is to seduce Nick in front of him. George decides to scorch the earth, and his final, explosive act of cruelty illuminates some of the propulsive drive behind their peculiar folie a deux.
This massive work—it has a runtime of three hours, with two 10-minute intermissions—allows us to ponder how every longstanding relationship is rooted in a private collection of shared stories and the damage that can be wrought by revealing them (or revealing them to be false). It makes us consider the often corrosive effects of ambition and family wealth. And it raises to great dramatic effect the puzzle of why people tolerate cruelty, which is often more mysterious than why they inflict it.
A work of this magnitude and complexity requires serious acting chops, and PCS’ ensemble cast is breathtaking. Norby’s George burns with a blue flame, teetering on the edge of control with rage, disappointment, and sardonic humor. Bloom fully inhabits Martha—brilliant, bored, sly, sensuous. She's shockingly fragile and just as surprisingly resilient. Tissell’s Nick combines obsequiousness and an inflated ego, making him perfect prey for Martha’s depredations. Song’s thoughtful progression of drunken behavior unfolds like an experimental dance.
Acting this good and directing this taut—by PCS artistic director Marissa Wolf—opens the depths to this winding play about marriage, illusion, trust, betrayal, and our continued struggles to not be alone.
Portland Center Stage presents Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Armory, 128 NW 11th, through Sun March 30, $25 - $81, tickets and showtimes at pcs.org
