Wedded blisters

SFGT's exquisitely barbed Woolf

by Bill Rodriguez

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? By Edward Albee. Directed by Kate Lohman. At the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre through October 11.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee's long-sanctified American Drama classic, shouldn't work as a play. For three hours we get to watch four people in a single room do battle, lobbing words like hand grenades. By all rights we should become shell-shocked before the second hour by the incessant screaming. We see from the outset that the main combatants, George and Martha, aren't the kind of people who will change much by the end. What's to keep us from crawling to the exit, covering our ears against the rat-a-tat-tat?

Well, first of all there's the thoughtful and skillfully structured script by Albee, the best of his works, although it didn't win him one of his three Pulitzers. The play is a deft indictment of shallow American values, hardly confined to its academic setting.

And lucky for us, in this case there's also the brilliant work going on in this production at the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre. The real payoff of the play is in its process, in what we pick up about the relationships in each exchange, whether volatile or momentarily subdued. And here we get four superbly nuanced performances, delicately choreographed in the rush and tumble of the action. Too many productions of this play merely scoot the actors out to mug and shout and dive for cover.

The time is 1962, the place the living room of a faculty couple on a small New England college campus. George and Martha have been married 23 years, and by now the barbs they hurl at each other have been honed to razor edges. Her central disappointment in him is that while he is in the history department, he isn't the history department, so to speak. Her daddy is the president of the college and had hoped to groom him not only for the department but to eventually take over the reins of the college itself. But poor, scholarly George (Nigel Gore) just didn't have the knack, not socially or politically, so he remains a humble(d) associate professor. His complaint with Martha (Joanne Gentille) is more general, that she has become a blowsy, drunken nag, braying her way about and humiliating him publicly when she gets the whim.

Their guests are a young faculty couple, whom we know only as Nick and Honey. On an alcoholic impulse at Daddy's cocktail party, Martha invited them over to chat -- at 2 a.m. What a pair. Blond and ambitious, new biology department member Nick (Anthony Estrella) is smart -- Master's at 19 -- but a reference to Mt. Parnasus sails over his head. His wife Honey (Molly Lloyd) is a frail wisp, a "simp," as George describes her, a lamb chop among the wolves.

Maybe the clearest way to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is to look at it as an examination and demonstration of psycho-social power: getting, wielding and keeping it; coping with losing it or not (quite yet) having it. It's a play about power plays. George fetches her drinky-poos but draws an (intentionally) absurd line at lighting her cigarette on one occasion. Martha rules her world like a loud and vulgar (her description) dominatrix, but she can't have kids (shudder). Non-tenured young Nick has to grin and bear it as this vile couple battle, patient in the knowledge that his day will come. Honey is a simp, and in this production her incessant smile through the first act is not a mask -- she truly isn't letting her hosts' rude behavior get through to her, a mode that the weak and powerless may need to switch into to stay sane.

Director Kate Lohman uses finesse as she guides us through this minefield, letting the shocks of recognition explode exquisitely in our minds. We hear the foreshadowing menace in George's voice as he refuses to light Martha's cigarette, but she's oblivious. Toward the end, Honey conspires with George in a moment that is baffling in some stagings; here her motivation is crystal clear -- fear. Lohman has carefully selected opportunities to contrast all the shouting with quiet exchanges or silence, and the effect can be quite stunning. The moving concluding scene ends not with a bang but a whisper.

So much could be said about these fine ensemble performances. Much of the satisfaction comes from choices not made. Gentile's Martha isn't just belligerent, she's intelligent, eyes alert to every interaction. By the time Martha gets her one gentle monologue of wistful regret, we're in sympathy. Gore gives depth to George, not just through his facile eloquence but with a growing sense of fatalistic understanding that by the end seems to have blossomed inside him. Estrella always keeps us apprised of Nick's roiling internal life; a contentious exchange with George is a devilish display of conflicting emotions. As for Honey, Molly Lloyd gives us more than a simpering housewife. Here the character eventually reveals flashes of fierceness when the comforting world she has willed into existence is threatened with exposure. Honey becomes a strong presence, not just a cipher.

Jennifer Zeyl's scenic design gives us a convincing living room, although the barbed wire coiled above it would need a less naturalistic setting to not seem tacked on.

Don't miss Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, especially if you know it only from the film. The original length amplifies Albee's intentions, and the acting is every bit as terrific.