Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

My review of Blackbird Theatre's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Meg Roe, Craig Erickson, Gabrielle Rose, and Kevin McNulty star in Blackbird Theatre's production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Credit: supplied

This Woolf has teeth

By Andrea Warner

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee’s magnificent war of words, first eviscerated Broadway audiences in 1962 — and it would seem those wounds have never fully healed. Almost 50 years later, with divorce rates sky-high and families falling apart on reality TV, the Tony Award-winning play is still the ultimate portrayal of marriage and bittersweet misery, as proven by Blackbird Theatre’s new production.

George (Kevin McNulty) is a history professor who has been married to the college president’s daughter, Martha (Gabrielle Rose), for 23 years. Fueled by booze, bitter regret, and occasional glimpses of genuine affection, theirs is a symbiotic relationship in which dependence on each other has become the thing they despise most about themselves. After a night of drinking at a faculty party, Martha invites the new professor, young biologist Nick (Craig Erickson), and his wife, Honey (Meg Roe), home for a nightcap, kicking off three hours of emotional slaughter comprised of horrific insults, betrayal, and psychological warfare. George and Martha rip each other to shreds, and by the time the sun’s come up, they may have taken Nick and Honey down with them.

Blackbird’s casting perfectly complements Albee’s genius script. Roe sparkles as the young naif Honey; her infectious giggles as she becomes increasingly intoxicated offer much-needed levity betwixt the numerous moments of tension and verbal violence. Erickson is perfectly at home in Nick’s smug arrogance, but turns up the heat as he and Rose flirt and flaunt their attraction to each other. Rose’s ability to turn on a dime from drunken seductress to tragic clown is absolutely awe-inspiring.

McNulty, though, is the real revelation — he seems born to play George. Every phrase that comes from his mouth, whether spat out in vicious retribution or sliding silkily off the tongue as a thinly-veiled threat, is layered in subtext. Under McNulty’s skillful portrayal, George is pleasantly threatening, whether letting Martha’s emasculating insults seemingly roll off his back, or calmly letting Nick know that he’s lulled him into divulging secrets so that he can be more easily destroyed.

With a running time of a little over three hours (plus two intermissions), this isn’t the easiest play to sit through emotionally, but the time passes quickly, with plenty of laughter to temper the flurry of insults and double entendres. Ultimately, this is a rare night of theatre, in which a flawless cast brings new depth to an already perfect play. It’s weird to say, but this is a welcome punch to the gut, where the audience is left as broken as the characters, but in a good way.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? runs to Jan. 16 at the Cultch (1895 Venables). Tickets $15-$35 from Tickets Tonight.

Theater spotlight 2009

Steven Schelling and I wrote a look back at some of our favourite theatre moments from 2009 for WE.

Ken Macdonald’s breathtaking set for The Constant Wife (left) and Itsazoo’s modern, roving musical take on Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (right) were two noteworthy 2009 theatre offerings.

Credit: supplied

Dropping the curtain on 2009

By Andrea Warner and Steven Schelling

This past year might be remembered by the theatre community as the calm before the storm: Established and fledgling companies faced the recession head-on, taking over every stage (and park and beach) they could, only to be hobbled at year’s end with potentially crippling government budget cuts for 2010. But if the last 12 months showed audiences anything, it’s that Vancouver actors, playwrights, and directors aren’t backing down.

From innovative staging, to youthful troupes coming of age, to women reigning supreme, WE turns its spotlight on some of the year’s most memorable stage moments.

SISTERS ARE DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES

Female performers, playwrights, and directors made major impressions in 2009. Kicking off the year was Arts Club’s production of The Constant Wife, W. Somerset Maugham’s Roaring Twenties-era comedy of manners. A classy middle finger to the notion that women should be reliant on men, this visually intoxicating, well-acted, and deeply subversive disguised-as-fluff comedy was further buoyed by leading lady Nicole Underhay’s portrayal of the nonchalant wife of a cheating doctor, and Moya O’Connell as her tough-as-nails spinster sister. At the opposite end of the theatrical spectrum — but no less effective — was Toronto-based playwright Linda Griffiths’s Victorian-era drama, Age of Arousal. A Touchstone Theatre Company and Arts Club collaboration, skillfully directed by Touchstone’s Katrina Dunn, Arousal explored feminism, women’s burgeoning sexual liberation, and the delicate balance of power between lovers Laara Sadiq and Susan Hogan. Ruby Slippers Theatre’s A Beautiful View featured a powerhouse Colleen Wheeler and Ruby Slippers co-founder Diane Brown blurring the line between friends and lovers. Capping off a phenomenal year in this area is Blackbird Theatre’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (currently running at The Cultch). Meg Roe lights up the stage as Honey, the young wife and comic foil to Gabrielle Rose’s wondrously venomous, gin-soaked Martha.

KIDS!

Well, they’re not really kids, but they are the relatively new kids on Vancouver’s theatre block. The past year offered a stellar showcase of up-and-coming theatre companies defying expectations to put on professional-quality productions that were both thought-provoking and pulsing with youthful energy. Itsazoo Theatre debuted resident playwright Sebastian Archibald’s modernized version of The Canterbury Tales. Entitled The Road to Canterbury, it was an entertaining and sly commentary on our muddy, modern society, with riffs on well-known Bob Dylan songs and jabs at our corporate culture, in much the way Geoffrey Chaucer’s Tales critiqued late medieval England. This was the group’s second summer using Queen Elizabeth Park as the setting for their special brand of roving theatre, hopefully signalling a new annual tradition to replace the summer meanderings of seemingly extinct production company Boca del Lupo. And Fighting Chance Productions — who in 2008 braved the not-so-biblical wrath of Westboro Baptist Church “God Hates Fags” pastor Fred Phelps for their production of The Laramie Project — literally shook the North Vancouver walls of the Presentation House with their brash and bold take on the ’90s Broadway hit, Rent.

SCENE STEALERS

Under Morris Panych’s direction, The Constant Wife was an immediate hit, but credit must be shared with Ken MacDonald and his Jessie Award-winning set design. All eyes were rivetted on the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage’s transformation into an Art Deco House & Home centrefold, featuring austere white pillars, rounded walls, and dreamlike sky-high windows. On a more economical and incongruous note, Vancouver playwright Andrew Templeton’s Fringe Fest hit Biographies of the Dead and Dying employed a rusted cast-iron bathtub as the centrepiece of its bare-bones set. Whether director Jeremy Waller envisioned some sort of overarching metaphor for his salvage-yard find or merely picked it up on a whim, watching cast members Heather Lindsay and Simon Driver lug it to and fro across the stage (or simulate violent sexual encounters on top of it) was, to say the least, unforgettable. But sometimes it’s the smallest details that stand out, even when watching an overblown musical comedy. Such was the case with Playhouse Theatre’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, in which a boardwalk bicycle transformed itself into the roulette wheel of a French Riviera casino. You may have missed the moment if you blinked, and yet, for those fortunate enough to catch it, it encapsulated in miniature all the innovation, wonder, and surprise that live theatre can offer.