Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

There are few things more dispiriting in the theatre than a director who mistakes themselves for God. Mercifully, Peter Goers is content to be mortal, and it serves Edward Albee very well. His production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is sharp, clean, and mercilessly engaging—without a whiff of the self-indulgent “innovation” that too often smothers plays under the wet blanket of directorial genius. Here, the words are the thing, and what words they are: Albee’s lacerations land with a sting that feels both eternal and horribly fresh.

George (Brant Eustice) and Martha (Martha Lott) are the sort of married couple who should be kept behind glass, lest their habits prove contagious. They drink like sailors and fight like prize-fighters, dragging their hapless guests Nick (Chris Asimos) and Honey (Jessica Corrie) into their midnight carnival of cruelty. What begins as “fun and games” turns, with the inevitability of a hangover, into Act Two’s “Walpurgisnacht” - a witching hour of rage - and ends with Act Three’s so-called “Exorcism”, where the illusions collapse and all that remains is raw, unlit truth.

Martha Lott and Brant Eustice do not merely play George and Martha, they inhabit them with a ferocity that makes one want to both applaud and call for reinforcements. Their timing is razor-edged, their cruelty dazzlingly articulate, their vulnerability all the more unbearable for being so hard-won. One cannot say they are “like” any other George and Martha, because that would suggest comparison is possible. It isn’t. They are definitive.

Goers deserves full credit not only for his direction but also for set and costume design. He understands that Albee is, above all, a poet of confinement. His plays trap us in a room where the walls inch closer with every line. Too many directors fling the doors open to “reinterpret”; Goers keeps them bolted shut, and the result is claustrophobic, bristling, and entirely correct.

The final scene - George and Martha stripped of their illusions - was theatrical alchemy: no tricks, no gimmicks, just the raw ache of two ruined people clinging to each other because there is nothing else left. If you felt nothing, I envy your insulation.

This is not merely a good production; it is a necessary one. Holden Street Theatres has given us Albee the way he ought to be - cruel, witty, and devastatingly true.

Four stars. And one more, hidden in the ice bucket.

Tony Knight