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    Theatre Review: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf Struggles Mightily With Its Themes

    Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is arguably the great American play of the last 50+ years. That it still speaks to our neuroses about ambition, impotence, frustration as clearly and bracingly and hilariously as it does is a testament to its power. Adrenaline Theatre Company is to be commended for tackling such a thorny piece in their inaugural outing and there are things to like, but on the whole it doesn’t land the knockout punch I was waiting for.

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    The play opens with George (Stefan Langer), an associate professor at a mid-level college, and Martha (Vicki Kessler), his wife and the daughter of the dean, staggering home after a university party. While pouring a nightcap, Martha reveals she’s invited guests over because “Father said we should be nice to them,” and after some acerbic bantering Nick (Chad Hewitt), a good-looking rising star of the biology department, and his wife Honey (Marybeth Griffith) arrive.

    George (Stefan Langer) and Martha (Vicki Kessler) prepare Nick (Chad Hewitt) for another round of "Get the Guest".  Photo by Michelle Batt.
    George (Stefan Langer) and Martha (Vicki Kessler) prepare Nick (Chad Hewitt) for another round of “Get the Guest”. Photo by Sam Greene.

    The first act, “Fun and Games,” mostly boils down to Martha bullying George and George firing back with well-practiced passive-aggression, including shooting at Martha with a novelty gun that has a flag reading “Bang,” until eventually he smashes a whiskey bottle, spraying glass all over the floor and prompting Martha’s retort, “I hope that was an empty bottle.”

    The two couples’ power dynamics are laid out clearly. Nick is looking for any handhold to climb up: through charm, through physical aggression, through sexual imposition. He’s just nervous enough about his outwardly-assured trajectory that he reaches a little too far and clings tight enough his knuckles whiten. Honey is an accoutrement in this trajectory, there to be beautiful and not step out line. Martha and George are also looking for whatever handholds they can find, but to bring other people down – they’re fighting a war of mutual attrition in trenches they barely remember digging, and delighting in Pyrrhic victories and ever-diminishing returns. Not long after the smashed bottle, Honey underlines the first act by racing out of the room to throw up, flipping the coffee table in her haste.

    The second act, ironically named “Walpurgisnacht” after the traditional European festivals welcoming the arrival of spring which also (not-coincidentally) is used as the beginning of the symbolic unrest of May Day, opens with Nick and George putting the pieces of the apartment back together. Martha and Honey return and the aggression starts to take the form of what are referred to as “games,” very childish games with an adult patina. Eventually George settles on “Get the Guests,” wherein he uses Nick’s confidences and Martha’s successful attempts to get under his skin in the first act to corrupt and erode the ground under Nick, with Honey caught in the crossfire. Again, Honey leaves to vomit and Nick threatens to become the thing George thinks he is – maybe the moment the whole play crystallizes, Nick’s ambition and confusion oozing out of the scab, together. Shortly after, Nick and Martha go upstairs together and George lets it happen but swears they will regret it, to himself and the empty walls.

    The third act, aptly named “The Exorcism,” opens with Martha coming into an empty living room, confused and shouting for someone, anyone. Within seconds, she starts talking to herself, in such terror of being alone. There’s a long, wrenching soliloquy from Martha and, of course, another game where even uglier truths are revealed – if there’s any truth at all.

    The first two thirds of this production work well. The first act avoids the temptation to play it slow. The language is so rich and so layered that you want to luxuriate in it, but wisely director Audrey Rush keeps it moving; a demented, cubist parody of a screwball comedy, underlined by references spattered throughout to Bette Davis and Joseph Cotten and Bringing Up Baby.

    The nagging quality that seeped into my enjoyment later in the first and grew in the second act is everything is a little too broad, everything’s a little too on the nose, the punchlines land so solidly it at times feels like a sitcom. Vicki Kessler plays Martha at such a fever pitch of frustration that it’s hard to watch and not always in a good way. Stefan Langer, the brightest light in this production, is electrifying to watch but still plays too heavily into George’s air of self-satisfaction; the rage and the sublimated machismo surface sporadically, they’re not always permeating the man. When he’s got something to do he does it well, but he too easily vanishes into the background instead of being a commentary on how men vanish. Marybeth Griffith is fine in the least written role in the play, and Chad Hewitt balances assuredness and anger born of confrontation with grace and aplomb

    Tragedy is built on people destroyed by their internal flaws, and this production feels too shallow to hold tragedy’s knife. That shallowness sinks the third act – the most abstract writing in the piece and the part that synthesizes the themes that all truth is relative and stripping illusion away doesn’t always leave you with reality. This play, especially the third act, is drenched in the sense of the apocalypse being right outside your door and that you are watching the gods you grew up worshipping – truth, rewards for hard work, family, love that lasts – slowly fall and shatter, to be replaced by a sense that we all do whatever we have to do to keep breathing. There are repeated references to “historic inevitability,” and that’s the real danger in the piece; the title conflating Virginia Woolf with “the big, bad wolf” is about the fear of the future. When these weightier themes appear in this production, they feel like frosting when they should be the meat of the piece. The third act isn’t a fist in your stomach here, it’s slow and exhausting and foggy.

    The biggest problem is the lack of carnality. Adrenaline Theatre Company has assembled a sexy cast, but somehow it doesn’t gel sexually. If the audience doesn’t feel an erotic charge bouncing off these characters for much of the play, it doesn’t make any sense that they stick it out for hours of horrific abuse. There’s a glimmer of it early and then it’s doused in noise so quickly you wonder if it was there. Martha’s sexual bullying, which is woven throughout the piece, frequently comes off as just plain bullying. These characters aren’t meant to be terribly sympathetic, but what sympathy the audience generally has by the horrifying third act is completely absent.

    It’s a valiant effort and I’m interested in seeing what Adrenaline Theatre Company does next, but there are better ways to spend three hours in a theatre right now.

    This play runs at 8:00pm Saturday January 31st and 8:00pm Friday February 6th and Saturday February 7th. For more information and tickets please visit Adrenaline Theatre Company’s website at Adrenalineco.squarespace.com.

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    Richard Sanford
    Richard Sanfordhttp://sanfordspeaks.blogspot.com/
    Richard Sanford is a freelance contributor to Columbus Underground covering the city's vibrant theatre scene. You can find him seeking inspiration at a variety of bars, concert halls, performance spaces, museums and galleries.
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