Bickering, boozing... is that really Lady Cora?
ROBERT GORELANGTON Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Ustinov Studio, Bath Until February 11, 3hrs 30mins
Even 60 years on, Edward Albee’s play is not for wimps. It goes on for three and a half hours (with two short intervals) as a couple fight, shout, bitch and fume, all while downing epic quantities of liquor. This lively new production, on a pocket-size stage, stars Elizabeth McGovern and Dougray Scott.
McGovern was, of course, Lady Cora in Downton Abbey, and if Carson the butler was to see her behaving as she does here, he’d have a heart attack.
The reason the play comes around so regularly? It’s a proper masterpiece, with two gigantic roles at its boozy centre. The black and white film version starred Richard Burton (an actor who certainly knew his way around a drinks cabinet) and Elizabeth Taylor (who won an Oscar for her lacerating performance) as the main couple, George and Martha.
The action takes place in a small college campus in New England. Martha is the daughter of the college head. Her hubbie George has gone nowhere in the history department, a failure his wife scathingly draws attention to. After a college party, they invite the new biology teacher and his dim-seeming wife for late-night drinks. George and Martha’s ‘you make me sick’ exchanges become a compulsory floorshow for the appalled young couple who hardly know where to look. The evening’s games include ‘Get the Guests’ and ‘Hump the Hostess’.
McGovern is dead glam, smiling with malice at her hubbie, her withering put-downs usually accompanied by a big exhalation of smoke. The dowdier Scott wears a cardigan and specs and sounds a bit like Cary Grant. I was irritated by his rather mannered delivery but his demeanour – a fake affability laced with venom – is highly effective.
Director Lindsay Posner gives all sorts of telling glimpses into their volcanic relationship, one that’s not a million miles from the warring couple in Noël Coward’s Private Lives.
The dialogue in this is so offlimits, so personal, it feels like you are eavesdropping. If it were just a pile of insults, however funny, it would become boring. But the evening deepens like a coastal shelf, revealing a love story of sorts.
There is also the revelation of a bitter truth (I won’t give it away) where you realise the play is about a couple coping with a shared grief in their own way.
Gina Bramhill and Charles Aitken are excellent as the childless young couple. She guzzles brandy as it dawns on her that her husband is a prat. I hadn’t fully realised before that she might eventually turn into Martha 30 years down the line.
If the evening occasionally fizzes when it should crackle, it never loses its fascinating grip.
And if you’re lucky enough to be happily married, you’ll be doubly thankful after watching this.