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The Gate Theatre
7th November 2016

Four characters, two calamitous marriages, one drunken night.  This is the simple premise for Edward Albee’s superb ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’, returning to the Gate Theatre after a stellar run in April. It is the story of two couples: George and Martha, a university professor and his colourful wife, and Nick and Honey, a younger colleague and his twee newly-wed, and the wicked night they spend together. The play is a visceral experience, with humour so dark one questions the morality in laughing along with it. Each of the four actors give performances of the year, raking the audience into their evening of drinking games as if we received the invites ourselves. It is a lewd, brash and fantastic piece of American theatre – something the Gate always does fantastically.

The play attacks its own setting: America of the 1960s. The two couples battle societal expectations, and questions of infertility, unhappy marriages and consumerism abound. The idea of Betty Friedan’s ‘problem with no name’ continuously popped into my head, as both the male and female characters settled into their roles and jumped straight back out again as they became drunker. The authenticity of the setting is achieved by Jonathan Fensom’s spectacular set design – a homely, autumnal living room full of books and lamps. Mirroring the intense psychology of the play, the set seems more chaotic as the night goes on, with broken glass and strewn flowers failing to be cleaned up. The bright red walls and even ceiling echoes this chaos; the cosy autumnal atmosphere turning to anger. The lighting too is clever, brightening in parallel to the rising sun.

Fiona Bell shines as erratic Martha, a striking character with a Medea-like fury surrounding her. Throughout the evening she goes from bullying her younger husband George to being firmly under his thumb. She uses words as weapons in her battle with George, conquering him in the first two acts before her ill-fated demise in the third. She is colourful, loud, desperate – and the perfect counterpart to George’s confined earnestness. Bell plays the drunkard with dignity, and is a truly class act. However, Martha’s strength as a female character does not override the misogynistic tendencies of the play. Two preponderant, off-stage male personalities dominate the tone of the play: Martha’s father, who is George and Nick’s boss, and Martha and George’s unnamed son, introduced in the first act. George becomes increasingly violent towards Martha, with explicit domestic violence and suggestions of rape making for extremely uncomfortable viewing – he refers to this caper as ‘merely exercising’.

The razor-sharp dialogue of playwright Edward Albee is the true star of the show. Even in 21st century Dublin, the script is bitterly brave, exposing the darkest sides of our psyches. Despite the insane amount of alcohol consumed throughout the three-act show, there is an edge of truth in each of the characters’ cutting remarks. A number of monologues interlude the action, which prevents the three hours from feeling too long. Each of the actors are fantastic storytellers, with much of the pre-history of the play being revealed in pockets of oration.

Mark Huberman’s Nick was another stand-out performance. He embodied the great, wide-mouthed American actors of the time, with an impressively accurate Mid-western accent. Him and his wife, Honey, played by Sophie Robinson, had worthy chemistry. Robinson adds a raw comic effect to the play, a gentle reminder to the audience that laughter is play is allowed.

The play has an intense physicality to it: the four characters jump from partner to partner, and while the actors portray this awkward tension quite well, an obscenity prevails due to the lack of consent. George pretends to read while Nick and Martha plan their trip to bed; he also calls Honey ‘angel-tits’. This sexual tension shows a childish, jealous side to the characters, a reminder to the audience of how potent engaging in drinking games can be, especially when they are of such an intense psychological nature.

Above all, the play is a reminder of the power of great acting – that sometimes theatre does not need anything bar talented actors and an ingenious script to viscerally affect. The four actors are a credit to their industry; to the emotionally exhausting work it must be performing such a script. The play does not condescend the audience in the slightest, asking us deep questions about love and fate and the imagination, of potential and happiness, and allowing us to come up with our own answers. The play ends with a commanding silence, a stark contrast to the literal screaming throughout. The audience leaves with a ringing in their ears, the beginning of a perpetual impact.