Review Roundup: WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Starring Imelda Staunton and Conleth Hill

Imelda Staunton and Conleth Hill star in a new production of multi Tony and Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? directed by James MacDonald.

Let's see what the critics had to say:

Sarah Crompton, WhatsOnStage: The effect of this deliberate sluggishness is to make Imelda Staunton as Martha over-compensate. I have rarely heard an actress better capture Martha's awful bray or watched one more truly embody her pugnacious refusal to stop slugging. But at her best Staunton is also capable of capturing infinite sadness with just a clench of her jaw or a movement of her hand. On the night I saw her, the only moment she mined the melancholy at Martha's heart was when - tellingly - she was alone on stage, clinking the ice in her glass, and shaking with silent misery. As she quietly tells Nick of her love for George - 'George and Martha, sad, sad, sad' she finds an incantatory sorrow but other speeches are oddly underwhelming.

Michael Billington, The Guardian: This is one of those rare occasions when play, performance and production perfectly coalesce. Imelda Staunton, having portrayed one of the sacred monsters of the American musical in Gypsy, now brilliantly embodies Edward Albee's campus Medusa in the shape of Martha. Conleth Hill matches her every inch of the way as her seemingly ineffectual husband, George. Watching the two of them pummel each other senseless in a three-hour verbal slugfest may be exhausting but is ultimately uplifting and cathartic.

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: Based on the simple premise of a late-night drinks party that comes to resemble a modern matrimonial equivalent to the flayed-alive horrors of Dante's Inferno, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is the most wickedly entertaining, most viciously nasty, most incrementally harrowing play in the American canon. And I've never yet seen an account of it that ticks all those boxes with such pen-breaking vigour. After a sluggish start to the New Year, it's as if the West End has been dragged out of hibernation by some blood-stained, howling predator.

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard: James MacDonald's precise and finely balanced production ensures that this modern classic still feels lethal. As Hill and Staunton fathom the depths of their poisonous duet, the humour is merciless and the pain exquisite.

Dominic Maxwell, The Times: [Staunton] barracks Conleth Hill, as her husband, George, for not spotting the movie she is quoting from. She barracks him for everything else too. That's how this brilliantly bumpy ride is going to roll: every exchange a tussle for territory, an act of intellectual vaudeville, a supremely self-aware psychodrama.

Quentin Letts, Daily Mail: It is bleak, excessive, repetitive. Listening to drunks in real life is boring enough. Watching them depicted on stage for an evening that lasts three and a quarter hours may feel like a penitence... This is the one which begins with unhappily-married, middle-aged Martha and George returning home after a long, boozy night.

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