Edward Albee’s most famous and notorious play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, has opened at the Sydney Theatre Company, and it hits you like a drink thrown in your face.
Kat Stewart (Underbelly, Offspring), making her debut on the Roslyn Packer stage, unfalteringly leads the cast of four in this unnerving, vicious and, at times, heartfelt comedy of manners.
The three-act, three-hour play takes you on a booze-fuelled ride through the pain and torment of people living with one foot in reality and the other in illusion. George and Martha are a middle-aged 1960s couple whose tempestuous years together have seen disappointments fester to create a swamp of bitterness, snark and co-dependency.
After a faculty event, Martha invites an unwitting young couple, Honey and Nick, over for drinks, even though the night should well and truly be over by then. What ensues is a series of cruel and embarrassing social ‘games’ where painful truths are exposed and exorcised – not only in George and Martha’s relationship, but between the Midwestern ‘innocents’ as well.
Award-winning director Sarah Goodes orchestrates the cast to perfection so that the true rhythm and musicality of Albee’s prose can be seen and felt in every beat. The four characters take turns in having their truths exposed, and the eye and heart are drawn in to witness their moments of vulnerability.
Albee doesn’t give you a chance to take a centring breath, though. Any moment of calm is quickly dissolved into another of chaos and bile.
David Whitely brings the passive-aggressive George to life as the unsuccessful (in his wife’s eyes) lecturer who didn’t live up to Martha or her father’s expectations. Whitely’s George is at once charming and prickly, toying with his wife and guests with his witty and cutting repartee.
Harvey Zielinski so naturally plays the increasingly outraged and incensed Nick, whose true colours begin to be exposed at the prodding and goading of George.
Emily Goddard brilliantly portrays the naive, drunken Honey. She provides key moments of comedic relief to break the tension and give the audience a much-needed, albeit slightly uncomfortable, laugh.
And Kat Stewart is a force to be reckoned with as Martha. Ferocious, delusional, desperately unhappy, and unwittingly fragile, she dominates the stage as she does the people on it.
Three hours may seem a long time to sit in a theatre, especially in this day and age of bite-sized content and Netflix specials. However, when the script, direction and flawlessly captivating acting come together, they transport you to another place.
Sometimes you get so swept up in the story that you find yourself balling your fists at the rising tension and breathing a cathartic sigh of release when the characters finally admit to the raw, honest truth of their lives.
If you want to see theatre that hits you in the gut with its power, takes you on a journey, and haunts you for days after, don’t miss Sydney Theatre Company’s fantastic production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? runs to 14 December at the Roslyn Packer Theatre. 22 Hickson Road, Millers Point NSW 2000.
Tickets are available here.
Website: https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/
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Photo credits: Prudence Upton
