Edward Albee’s 1962 classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opened at Canadian Stage on Thursday evening in a production directed by Brendan Healy.  It’s a long (not far short of 3.5 hours with two short intervals) and complex play; heavily dependent on quick-fire dialogue and with occasional outbreaks of absurdism.  An older academic couple invite the “new man” and his wife back for drinks after a faculty party at a small New England college.  George, a historian of modest distinction, is married to Martha, the daughter of the college president.  The newcomers are Nick, a biologist, and his wife Honey.

There’s a lot of drinking and George seems to be trying to establish some sort of ascendancy over the younger man.  Martha mocks George.  George fights back,  Honey drinks herself into a stupour.  Martha makes advances to Nick.  George starts to act as if he is some kind of ringmaster.  “What game shall we play next?”.  There are several games including “Humble the Host”, “Get the Guests” and “Hump the Hostess”. Each game is more visceral than the last until we get to the one about George and Martha’s son.  By this stage I think it’s clear that George and Martha have played these games before with other couples.  It may even be the college’s unofficial initiation rite for new faculty.  But something shocking happens in the last game and it’s not clear whether that’s how it always ends or whether, finally, George has gone off-piste and genuinely broken with Martha.  For all the apparent artificiality it still feels quite raw though not perhaps as shocking as it did in 1962.

It’s a really hard play to bring off.  Maintaining interest in four drunks in a room for three hours is a challenge for director and cast but this production manages it really well.  The dialogue is crisp and keenly timed and the physical acting is just not quite OTT.  Paul Gross as George and Martha Burns as Martha are two of Canada’s best veteran actors and they bring all their skill and craft to this one.  Rylan Wilkie came in for Mac Fyfe as Nick at very short notice and does remarkably well.  Hailey Gillis gives a very committed performance as Honey though I think the part is a bit of an afterthought.  Nick has to have a wife but Albee doesn’t seem to care much about her as a character.  The play still seems longer than it needs to be to me but that’s Albee’s fault not the cast’s.

It was also really refreshing to see a play that has only the briefest mention of Nazis after a week of Nazis past, present and future on the Toronto stage.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? continues at the Bluma Appel Theatre until February 16th.

Photo credit: Dahlia Katz.