MCT's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" is Simply Stunning
Photo by Michael Brosilow
There is an entire genre of plays that begin with a cordial gathering of two or three couples who first exchange pleasantries, then enjoy a few cocktails, and then begin to tell truths that are not just hard to hear, they are harmful. With the gloves off and the booze flowing, the party devolves from a polite social event to a no-holds-barred cage match, each comment an accusation, each statement more savage and cutting than the last. With lives and lies laid bare, the partygoers limp home, disillusioned and often damaged beyond repair.
Edward Albee’s award-winning play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? may not have been the first of this kind, but it is definitely the best. The 50 year-old drama of family dysfunction is erudite, shocking, relentless, and occasionally very funny. Over the course of an alcohol- and vitriol-infused night, it pits two couples against one another to examine the spaces between love and hate, pain and pleasure, expectation and disappointment, and ultimately reality and illusion.
Deftly directed by Keira Fromm, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s current production of this American classic is simply astonishing. Playing in the intimate Studio Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center through February 12, it is a three-act catastrophe that’s as intellectually and emotionally enthralling as it is horrifying.
Photo by Michael Brosilow.
When the play opens it’s already late – the wee hours of the morning, after a welcome reception for new faculty and their spouses at a small New England college. Beleaguered history professor George (Jim Ridge) and his gregarious wife Martha (Laura Gordon) stumble home after the perfunctory event, and George is more than ready to call it a night. But Martha has other plans. She has invited one of the new hires over for a nightcap – Nick, an attractive young biology professor (Casey Hoekstra), who is accompanied by his mousy wife Honey (Kate Romond). And then the games begin.
With a captive audience, George and Martha exchange barbs rooted in a lifetime of disappointment and humiliation – constantly jockeying for position and power. It’s a dance that is as cruel as it is practiced; they each derive perverse pleasure from pushing the other to the brink. Unwitting witnesses to the verbal carnage, Nick and Honey are plied with near lethal amounts of alcohol, until the pair is seriously impaired. Without their sober inhibitions, the young couple also reveals some of their baser desires, insecurities and regrets, only to have these admissions weaponized by the hosts when they tire of sparring with one another.
In the face of this sadistic story on the edge of absurdity, the audience is challenged to weigh each character’s statements and try to separate fact from fiction while our allegiances constantly shift – it is clear that several of the players have the capacity to be both victim and monster. Interestingly, it is George, head bowed and alone in the dark at the end of the first two acts, who we are meant to sympathize with most, since we momentarily see his battered soul in an honest, fading light. (Gorgeous lighting design by Jason Fassl.)
Photo by Michael Brosilow.
In the hands of less-skilled actors, Virginia Woolf can be a tedious and monotonous battle. But in this incredible production it is nuanced, provocative and explosive at every turn. Fromm keeps the characters moving from an upstage desk, down hallways, climbing up to stair landings, then jumping on top of furniture before sinking to the floor at the foot of the fireplace. She utilizes every inch of Fassl’s intricate, multi-level set that is packed with items that speak volumes about the inhabitants. (Impressive props by Jim Guy.) The cast and director have also diligently filled in the spaces between the sentences and found variations in tone from moment to moment to keep us off-balance and engaged.
As the weary and washed out George, Jim Ridge is a marvel. Weighed down by professional failures and constantly taunted about his many shortcomings as a man and a husband, Ridge’s character is resigned to his lot, but has just enough self respect left for one final, winner-take-all bout. A scholar whose only remaining outlets for his intelligence are poetic declarations and dizzying wordplay (which Ridge handles with ease) George reads as ineffectual and hopelessly arcane. But he is underestimated at others’ peril. Ridge also imbues George with a theatrical flair for storytelling, which he uses to savage the others in the end.
Ridge’s slight frame is somehow made smaller by muddy gray trousers and a lumpy brown sweater that help him fade into the background. But his bitterness is palpable as he mocks everyone around him, gently at first and then with a precise malice, until he becomes frighteningly physical in his threats to Martha in the second act.
As his love and adversary, Laura Gordon’s Martha is equally bitter and equally dangerous, but not nearly so subtle. Her loud, oversized character is desperate for attention as she romps across the stage in a low-cut sweater that’s much too girlish for the college matron’s age and station. (Excellent costume design by Amy Horst.) Instead of sneaking up on her opponents, she steamrolls them with orders or harangues them with constant belittling remarks.
Demanding sexual attention, she grabs the hands of both George and Nick at different points of the play, urging them to fondle her. Flirting openly with Nick, Martha dares him to come into her bed in full view of her husband, whose lack of jealousy infuriates her. In the absence of a positive response, she settles for any response at all.
Photo by Michael Brosilow.
But during her softest, most heartfelt moments of the play, Gordon plumbs a whole new dimension to the character as Martha relives memories of her son’s birth and early childhood. When one of her most tightly held fantasies is destroyed, Martha is completely undone and Gordon falls to the floor like a discarded ragdoll. It is a heartbreaking portrait of frustration and loss.
Occasionally in productions of Virginia Woolf, Martha and George’s antics are so extreme that the younger couple fades into the background. But here the hapless guests are equally important and compelling. In particular, Casey Hoekstra’s Nick stands out as a powerful threat to the veteran professor, an incredibly attractive prize for the desperate housewife, and a potent catalyst to the overall destruction.
As the cocky outsider in a smartly tailored blue suit, Nick is a bright star on a meteoric career trajectory. An ambitious scientist, outgoing and charismatic with a few well placed blond streaks in his curly bangs, Hoekstra paints the wunderkind academic as both politically savvy and annoyingly smug. Half-chuckling at George’s stories while rolling his eyes, Nick’s dismissive “Okay, Boomer” thoughts are almost audible. But when the host finally finds his young colleague’s weakness – his hurried and unsteady marriage to a rich childhood friend – we know the younger professor has no chance. When he finally utters, “Jesus Christ, I think I understand this,” it is as if he has been robbed of all his bluster and confidence.
As Nick’s slight, shy wife Honey, Kate Romond is also impressive, although she has the fewest lines and spends a great deal of the play offstage. Dressed in a pale pink dress, conservative pearls and white sweater, she is the picture of innocence. Insecure in herself and her marriage and unaccustomed to copious amounts of brandy, over the course of the play Honey vacillates between giddy release, sleepy drunkenness, and debilitating embarrassment. Reaching out to George almost as a father figure throughout the night, she is mortified by his cutthroat attacks as the dawn breaks. As significant in Romond’s performance as her fragility is her presence – her active listening throughout the piece. A mostly silent babe in the woods, she is perfect foil for Martha’s brash manor and rough edges.
In a present that is already difficult for most people, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is not a balm. But this production is a masterclass in one of American theater’s seminal works — one that Milwaukee audiences will be talking about for a long time. Don’t miss it.