BWW Reviews: WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF Spars Three Riveting Rounds at Theatre Harrisburg

Somewhere along the way, and probably because of the casting of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the acclaimed movie version of Edward Albee's play. WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF got the label of "camp classic." That's unfortunate. The unsympathetic, unattractive, and rightly tony-winning portrayal of the rapidly decaying marriage of a university faculty couple (the film rightfully garnered Oscars for Taylor and for Sandy Dennis, too) is one of the most viscerally compelling dramas of modern stage history. Vitriolic dialogue, hysterical behavior, and unrelenting psychological manipulation create a drama that still feels as fresh as every newly broken marriage, and while it's ugly to watch, it's impossible not to do so.

Theatre Harrisburg's put on a new staging of the classic, one that's high on raw nerve and low on camp, and it's as compelling to watch, and to puzzle over, as any production of the show. Director Thomas Hostetter's assembled a cast that's themselves impossible not to watch, and invested them with one of America's classic plays.

David Richwine and Brenda Eppley portray George and Martha, a long-married faculty couple. Their marriage is rooted in, and affected by, a serious power imbalance - she's the daughter of the long-term university president, and he's the professor with an inability to navigate faculty politics. He can't manage to run his own department let alone be in consideration for an administrative position or be heir to his father-in-law's fiefdom. Their marriage is equally rooted in and affected by their shared weakness for massive quantities of liquor. They're vicious, near-violent, and always going for each other's jugular... but there's the odd sense, underneath the alcohol-fueled rages, that this is how they like it, that they're one of those dysfunctional couples that enjoys being miserable with each other. A few apparently casual lines of dialogue, and the very last scene of the play, suggest that's exactly the case and that no matter how badly they seem to hate each other, they love doing just that and thriving on their misery.

Into that misery walks the new young faculty couple, Nick and Honey (Jeff Luttermoser and Amber Mann), a biologist whom George recognizes as a would-be stud and an out-of-her-depth, singularly non-intellectual young woman who can't hold her liquor, but who had no trouble holding her husband captive early in their own marriage. Invited over for after-faculty-party drinks to the older couple's house, they find themselves trapped in the midst of one of George and Martha's alcohol-fueled conflagrations, and wind up contributing to it themselves.

Emotional abuse, foul language, and actual or at least attempted adultery, result, with everyone except Honey certain they have something to prove to each other, and willing to all but kill to prove it. Unfortunately, all they have to prove is their inability to deal with reality, and each couple's fertility issues - George and Martha's child issues, Honey's hysterical pregnancy problem that resulted in Nick marrying her. Set in the Sixties, gender issues, whether Albee intended them to be addressed or not, abound. Martha sought power through her father and her husband, who's failed her, since she has none of her own; George questions his own potency while hating Nick's. Nick feels he was trapped into marriage and wants to prove his own virility, while Honey is a painfully stereotypical out-of-touch young housewife. Martha and George's marital issues, and Nick's marital issues, all involve children or the lack of them, with a vague idea that these are the women's fault.

Eppley is a blowsy, blustering Martha whose drunken declaration that she is the Earth Mother seems entirely possible. Richwine, who came late to the part three weeks before the opening curtain, is a fit and proper George, seemingly baffled by the world around him but far sharper, both in mind and tongue, than anyone expects. Luttermoser and Mann are appropriately shell-shocked before succumbing to alcoholic excess themselves simply to survive their hosts' center-ring bout.

It's a three-act play perhaps better described as three rounds, with George and Martha the main match of the evening. However, when their terrified guests finally depart, it's George and Martha raising each other's hands as the bell rings, and as Martha admits that it's she who's "afraid of Virginia Woolf."

This isn't a pretty play, but it's a fine production of one of the American classics. If you feel as shell-shocked as Nick at the end, it's only because you've been paying attention.

At Theatre Harrisburg through Sunday. No musical comedy, but something in fact better, a truly well-written, insightful drama that's aged well. Visit theatreharrisburg.com or call 717-232-5501.

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