Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf Reviews — Page 2

I saw it this week. I can't imagine for the life of me how ANYONE could call this production the "best thing in years." Such a misguided/misdirected mess on that stage....

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I know. It's after 11:00.

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*bites nails*

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I'm tired of waiting around for Brantley and Barnes. I'll read them in the morning. Good night!

THANK. GOD.

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Brantley's full review -- A Rave:

"Which one are you betting on? The body or the brain? The big-breasted brawler or the spineless professor? Some advice to fans of histrionic blood sports: Don't call this game prematurely. With Kathleen Turner in one corner and Bill Irwin in the other, the balance of power is never fixed in the pulse-racing revival of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," which opened last night at the Longacre Theater.

Everybody ultimately loses in Edward Albee's great marital wrestling match of a play from 1962. But theatergoers who attend this revealingly acted new production, directed by Anthony Page, are destined to leave the Longacre feeling like winners, shaken but stirred by the satisfaction that comes from witnessing one helluva fight.

Tempering the play's notorious vitriol with eye-opening compassion, this interpretation restores characters who have acquired the faces of Freudian monsters to purely human form. In following Mr. Albee's account of a couple's long-night's journey into dawn, set at their home on an insular New England campus, Mr. Page and company have affectingly scaled a masterpiece back from operatic excess to the tautness of a chamber work.

They have done so without sacrificing the emotional intensity or the abundant, alarming humor that finds the gut-wrenching factor in belly laughs. And as the man-eating Martha, Ms. Turner, a movie star whose previous theater work has been variable, finally secures her berth as a first-rate, depth-probing stage actress.

In a Broadway season crowded with disappointments, "Virginia Woolf" is a very welcome surprise."

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/03/21/theater/reviews/21wool.html

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Updated On: 3/21/05 at 01:14 AM

God, I hope so. She's put so much into this part and and she truly deserves that statue this year.

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Cherry Jones could win -- but she's won before. That could give an advantage to Turner. Lange won't win. The play is going to get panned.

Clives Barnes gives it Three and a half Stars in the Post:
http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/41451.htm

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OK, so i already saw it on the 12th, BUT, i also went to the opening last night with my younger sister and i can tell you that there were significant advances from eight days ago. WOW! kathleen turner really stepped up her performance and made such an impression. people all around me were crying during the final moments of the play. i had to remind myself to breath after it was all over. kathleen and bill came out afterwards to sign playbills, so i took my sister. they were both incredibly kind and generous to us. I am soooo glad that the times gave her and the play such a glowing review. that was the one i was really worried about. i REALLY want kathleen to win the TONY. seriously, margo, you should consider revisiting the longacre. you would not be disappointed.

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Margo was talking about Glass Menagerie in that post at 1:59 AM, Lamc16, not Virginia Woolf, which I think the Divine Margo liked.

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I have to say, for me, the revelation here was Bill Irwin, the scene-stealer was Enos, Kathleen was Kathleen and Harbour felt like the pretty-boy out of his depth.
I disagree so completely with the critic who said Irwin doesn't show his character buckling under the weight of his failures; on the contrary, what *I* saw was the straw breaking the camel's back. There was an air of repetition in what Martha says of George (how he's missed his chances) that, to me, gives rise to a new George as we are watching the show: a George who bites back with as much teeth and saliva as Martha has been giving for years. I think it's a triumphant evening of revenge for George and Irwin plays it beautifully.