Mutual Misery

The marriages in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? are fueled and maintained by alcohol, bitterness, delusions, and lies. One peculiar night after George and Martha have come home from a university party and are settling into their nightly routine of drunkenly tearing each other down, Martha informs George that she has invited a newly employed professor and his young wife over for drinks. George is a history professor and married to Martha, the daughter of the university president. Over the course of the night the years of deception reach a breaking point, and by sunrise the fantasies that are holding up both of the marriages have been shattered.

The leads are excellent and have a raw chemistry together. Richard Philpot is George, a smart middle-aged man who has been defeated by his wife, career, and father-in-law but wears this as a badge of honor. Martie Groat Philpot is especially good as Martha, a sexy, blunt, and spunky woman.

George and Martha love to hurt and be hurt by one another. When George complains about the treatment he’s receiving from Martha she replies, “You can stand it, you married me for it! My arm is tired of whipping you.” They primarily use sex to wound one another and much of the script is laced with sexual dialogue. When Martha tries to seduce the young Nick into dancing with her, George warns that the dance Martha wants from him, “is a very old dance, as old as they come.”

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is performed in a simple black box theater. The audience surrounds the stage on all four sides giving the play an intimate quality, but this also has some technical drawbacks. (I got stuck sitting behind a coat rack for the first act.) The set is a living room from the 60’s complete with ugly couches and a full bar to keep the night going.

The actors who play the younger couple, Nick and Honey, are obviously not as experienced as the two leads. In a show where the cast is only four this sours some of the enjoyment of the show and makes certain scenes painful to watch. Carol Zombro goes overboard in exaggerating Honey’s ditzy qualities and comes off like a two year old. But even though her character is over the top at least she’s consistent with her performance. Trevor Maher who plays Nick is not consistent at all. There was nothing that suggested internal motivation, and he over enunciated all of his lines. Also he physically did not look like the all-American hunk that the script kept suggesting he was.

The play ends powerfully with Martha telling the guests about her and George’s son while George reads from a Latin catechism. Martha’s story and George’s chanting merge into the chaotic litany that has kept their dysfunctional marriage together for so long.