Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf Reviews

Talkin Broadway is first -- mostly positive:

"Irwin and Turner also aren't immune to this, and never fully shed their previously established personas and mannerisms: Irwin's broad, calculated grimaces are more appropriate for his clowning work than for the beaten, submissive George, and Turner's whiskey-soaked baritone too often remains too monotonic to capture the nuances of the colorful, musical language that Martha exploits almost continuously. Page's direction, otherwise well-judged in bringing the play from its deceptively conventional beginning to its shattering conclusion, doesn't give them the support they need to break out of their too-familiar shells.

But Albee's work is strong enough to withstand imperfections as minor as these, and the resulting production is still as thrilling, funny, and ultimately devastating as it needs to be. One has the right to expect little better of either a modern or a timeless classic play - the last 42 years have proven Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the former; one suspects history will judge it the latter soon enough. "
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/VirginiaWoolf.html

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Can we talk about just how boring and predictable the Arts & Leisure has become? Perhaps this is not the thread... but the more interesting story on this production is how Bill Irwin has moved from his celebrated physical comedy to Albee leading man in both The Goat, and now Virginia Woolf.

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"They need to get a better features editor and bring back the Sunday theatre column -- it's missed."

I agree about the theatre column. Instead of shipping Frank Rich back to Op-Ed, have him write about theatre. Seriously, nobody writes about theatre better than Mr. Rich.

How is that review mostly positive? Did you read it? It is mixed. After every "compliment," there is something wrong with the show...

No matter what he says about the "minor" imperfections, the fact that he mentions them and dedicates a whole major paragraph to them bumps it down from positive to mixed-positive for me...

In the reviewer's first paragraph he calls the revival "mostly knockout," so I agree with Margo that it can be characterized as a mostly positive review.

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I saw it last Tuesday and agree mostly with this review. It's flawed, but still works for the most part. It's just not as intense and affecting as it should be. Here's my review:

https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.cfm?boardname=bway&thread=842108#873418

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A question for those who have seen the show (I go this week)-Enos sounds like a European name. Is Ms. Enos from another country, and if so, does she play the character that way (e.g., with an accent, etc.)?

No, Enos doesn't perform with a foreign accent or anything -- I don't know what her background is so even with that name she could be American. She's terrific, by the way.

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Updated On: 3/20/05 at 06:17 PM

Kuchwara (AP) is a rave:

"George and Martha, the hard-slugging husband and wife at the center of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", have returned to Broadway, and their fisticuffs, verbal and otherwise, are just as ferocious and funny as ever.

Director Anthony Page and a terrific cast headed by Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner mine the fierce humor but don't neglect the heartbreak that runs through Albee's landmark 1962 drama, which opened Sunday at Broadway's Longacre Theatre.

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As expected, Turner, with her throaty voice and larger-than-life presence, has the blowzy, braying and sexually predatory Martha down pat. But the actress offers more than that, particularly in the play's third act, when, alone on stage, she touchingly reveals "I cry all the time." It's a side of Martha the woman she won't put on public display, and Turner captures the moment beautifully.

Irwin is a revelation, giving one of those intense performances that makes you see George in a totally new light. An acclaimed clown and mime, the actor earned his Albee stripes replacing the amazing Bill Pullman in the Broadway production of "The Goat." He is even better here. His George is barely contained, polite but quivering with anger and resentment that Martha knows how to draw out.
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Designer John Lee Beatty's dusty, musty living room set, done up in shades of brown, perfectly captures the drabness of the older couple's life.

Yet the fireworks on stage compensate for that stale environment. As George remarks before the conflagration really begins, "It gets pretty bouncy around here sometimes." Yes, indeed. And those bounces make for a superb evening of theater.
AP Review

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Theatremania is very mixed -- he loves Turner, but doesn't care for Irwin, Enos or Page's direction:

" Because Turner is giving such a star turn by submerging everything of the star in her, she's the reason to see this Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a play that was in 1962 and still is the last word on the disillusionment of the education-and-sherry set. With the exception of Beatty's dipped-in-numbing-browns surroundings, nothing else in the production entirely comes up to Turner's level. To be sure, the proceedings are never less than effective. As the by-now-familiar wee-hours taunt fest unravels, Martha still baits George, and he retaliates in the only manner he knows -- by going after the younger, new man on campus. The assailed, 28-year-old Nick attempts to fight back while protecting his inebriated and upchucking wife Honey (Mireille Enos). There's still ominous talk of the son that George and Martha have supposedly reared and the hysterical pregnancy that Honey endured. (This is an early example of the childless-couple theme that has obsessed Albee, who was adopted.) And it's still very noticeable that Nick -- whose name is never actually spoken in the play -- doesn't rush Honey out of George and Martha's place when George insists on playing "Get the Guest." The fact that the guests remain on the dangerous premises continues to feel like Albee's least successful contrivance.

But though the play is almost intact (it was apparently revised in 2004), the potential it has to suggest the destructive nature of people made monstrous on their own mental steroids is only partially realized. The problem is Bill Irwin -- and, by extension, director Anthony Page, who hasn't guided the actor knowingly enough. Irwin, who was right on target in Albee's The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, plays many of George's moments with the dexterity that he exhibits in his own acclaimed pieces. In particular, he gets George's hampered affection for Martha and he induces the genuine laughs that Albee built into the script, but he misses the larger implications of George's nasty wit and concomitant fecklessness. George is a beaten man, aware that he has missed his chance at the chairmanship of the college's history department. He knows that he's married to the boss's daughter, with all the implied negatives. He's a disgruntled academic, done in by his own weaknesses, but Irwin doesn't show him bucking under the weight of the loss.

David Harbour has an easier time with Nick. Physically, he's everything that Albee calls for. Harbour had a not dissimilar assignment in last year's Between Us; here, he handily becomes a former campus dreamboat settling into a career as an unimaginative biology professor and an uncertain husband. Mireille Enos, burbling her lines to indicate Honey's desire to please, may never have seen Sandy Dennis's film interpretation of the role, yet she gives the impression that she's not only seen it but studied it. If so, that would explain why she's more caricature than character. (Director Page doesn't seem to have helped her any more than he helped Irwin.)

If Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night is the great American play of the 20th century, Albee did himself proud by writing a stunning Long Night's Journey Into Day. But Anthony Page's treatment suggests that, when it comes to George and Martha's battle, he's the one who's afraid of Virginia Woolf. "
http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/5790

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USA Today gives it Three-and-a-half stars:


http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2005-03-20-virginia-woolf_x.htm

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Yeah, I think most of the critics will like Lange, but trash everything else about it.

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