Review: WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?

Live and in person at the Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto, Ont. Produced by Canadian Stage Company. Playing until Feb. 16.

www.canadianstage.com

Written by Edward Albee

Directed by Brendan Healy

Set and costumes by Julie Fox

Lighting by Kimberly Purtell

Sound by Thomas Ryder Payne

Choreographer, Alyssa Martin

Cast: Martha Burns

Hailey Gillis

Paul Gross

Rylan Wilkie

Almost every creative associated with this production of Edward Albee’s 1962 classic has done wonderful work—elsewhere. This production is plagued with weird amplification, a set too large for the play, direction that dissipates the tension and uneven acting. A disappointment.

The Story. Some folks might erroneously describe the play as a three-and a half hour verbal slug-fest between warring married couple, George and Martha. In fact, the wrangling is deliberate. This is how George and Martha show each other love and affection—they argue and insult each other with equal vigor. But to raise the sport of it, they do this arguing, wrangling, insulting and games playing in front of a younger couple, Nick and Honey, who have been invited over to George and Martha’s house. I know it’s odd, but this is Edward Albee writing here and he knows his way around the ins and outs of combative, wounded people, how they lash out to be noticed and taken into account.

The Production. The curtain slowly rises on Julie Fox’s startling set of George and Martha’s living room. A high staircase goes up along the stage right wall and a large illuminated hallway is stage left. The stage left wall of the room is mirrored and the reflection is distorted. There is a glass case along the stage left wall with figurines? Liquor bottles? Can’t make it out clearly from my seat across the theatre. There is a small drinks trolly loaded with bottles of liquor. The back of a long darkish mustard coloured couch faces the audience. The front door is rather small for such a huge room, and by extension, the house.

Questions arise immediately. The stage of the Bluma Appel Theatre is huge across and deep. Julie Fox has envisioned a set as mammoth as the stage. Why? Where is the claustrophobia in the play? The mirrored side wall of the room distorts the reflection of those people in the room? Is this symbolic? Why? Isn’t the play enough for us to figure this out?

It’s 1 am in the morning. George (Paul Gross) and Martha (Martha Burns), a middle-aged couple, have just returned from a boozy faculty party at the house of the president of the university, to introduce new faculty to everybody. George is an associate professor of history at the university. Martha, his wife, is the daughter of the president of the university. So, there is a lot of subtext.

When they enter the house, Martha says with contempt “What a dump.” She is both expressing her disgust with the surroundings and quoting a line from a Bette Davis film. She is also setting up her control of the situation, establishing the baiting of George, and her coarse demeanor at home.

Then any focus we have on these two is dissipated as the set turns on a revolve and the back of the couch is turned to face the audience from upstage. The revolve will be used again during an emotional scene later in the production with the same results: confusion of who is talking, what is being said and focus being distracted.  Brendan Healy is a wonderful director. What was he thinking here with all this distraction?

Julie Fox’s costumes are terrific in establishing the attitudes and dress sense of the characters. Upon entering Martha initially wears an auburn coloured wig and an appropriate dark coloured dress, synched at the waist. George, shaggy haired, wears baggy pants a rumpled shirt and a sweater that can button up. George hates these faculty ordeals and let’s that be known at the casual, even shabby way he dresses. Martha wants to make a good impression so she dresses in an ungaudy way. She leaves the gaudiness for home and company when she changes into gold slim pants and a green top.

Unbeknownst to George, Martha has invited a younger couple, Nick (Rylan Wilkie) and his wife Honey (Hailey Gillis) over that night/morning for drinks. Nick is in the biology department—although Martha keeps thinking it’s the math department. Honey is Nick’s mouse of a wife—as Martha describes her. Again, Julie Fox’s costumes reflect the characters. Nick is in a light-coloured suit and tie. Honey is in a dress.

George is exhausted and aghast—it’s 1 am in the morning and he finds it inappropriate to invite anybody over for drinks at this hour. Martha says: “Daddy said to be nice to them.” When she keeps repeating that phrase, we get the sense that Martha has no boundaries and is desperate to please her father and do what he says, no matter how inappropriate.

As the production unfolds, we realize that both are true—Martha is reckless with boundaries and is determined to do anything for her father to get his stingy favour.

The actors are microphoned and the resultant sound makes everyone sound either muffled or underwater. This very odd, since Thomas Ryder Payne, who is listed as the sound designer, has done fine work, elsewhere.  

George and Martha wrangle with equal vigor—Paul Gross as George, laid-back, watchful and calculating when to thrust and parry, Martha Burns as Martha, braying, loud, vulgar and committed fully.

We also see how fragile the marriage of Nick (Rylan Wilkie) and Honey (Hailey Gillis) is. Nick is ambitious. He wants to get ahead and will use any means to do it. Honey comes from money and seems to have tricked Nick into marriage. She’s both physically and emotionally fragile. Nick is protective of her and a bit exasperated. Nick and Honey are not just passive observers in this evening, they participate in their own way. Rylan Wilkie is a last minute replacement as Nick. I didn’t believe him as the buff, ambitious man ready to use any means to rise up in the faculty. As Honey, Hailey Gillis plays the obvious; simpering, easily drunk, always getting sick—there is more to Honey than surface.

It would appear that Martha is the leader.  She is loud, abrasive, caustic and targets George for her invective in front of the guests. She craves attention and this is how she gets it. She wants to make George jealous, so she comes on to Nick—it seems to be a pattern with Martha—to come on to the younger men on faculty. Even here the staging seems almost polite rather than erotic.  This games playing is how George and Martha wrangle with each other. But then Martha does something that George finds unforgivable—Martha tells Honey of their son. This was something George forbad her to do. So now George goes from being deceptively passive, to subtly taking over to teach Martha a lesson.

That said, this is a love story between George and Martha. This is the murky world of Edward Albee. Both George and Martha get their jollies from the games playing and the slinging of darts and barbs. They are equally matched until George gains the advantage.  Confiding to Nick we learn of Martha’s desperation to be noticed and loved by her father. We learn how George was the only person who made her happy; who made her laugh; who played the games with her but made up the rules; for all her invective to him, she loves him and he cares for her. All one has to do is listen to the play.

Comment. As I said, almost every single creative person here has done wonderful work—elsewhere. I found this production to be a profound disappointment. The set was too large for what should be a claustrophobic. Where is it written that the set has to fill a vast stage? The result is that Brendan Healy staged it in such a way that characters would bellow across this expanse to other characters and the sense of danger was dissipated because of the distance. So, I found the production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? a disappointment of a play I really like.

Canadian Stage Presents:

Plays until February 16, 2025.

Running time: 3 hours, 30 minute (2 intermissions)

www.canadianstage.com