Review: City Theatre's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Rick Smith as George and Meredith O’Brien as Martha in City Theatre's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Photo by Andy Berkovsky)

These days, productions at the City Theatre feel like a litmus test for one's ability to sit through three-plus hours of live theater after a two-year COVID hiatus.

And not just any theater. We’re talking risk-taking, game-changing, word-heavy plays the likes of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, which was the company’s first full-length production of the season, and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which opened this past weekend.

Albee’s 1962 drama invites audiences to be a collective fly on the wall of George and Martha’s modest home to witness their cruel psychological warfare, intense verbal abuse, and what amounts to some of the best writing for the American stage.

The play, which is divided into three hourlong acts, begins as George – a middle-aged, underachieving associate professor of history at a small New England college – and his malcontent wife, Martha, return home at 2 am, familiarly and functionally drunk from a Saturday night party at the college president’s house. Much to George’s displeasure, Martha has invited an opportunistic young assistant professor and his mousy wife to their home for a nightcap. Over the course of the late-night hours, George and Martha ply Nick and Honey with alcohol and use the two as pawns, props, and cannon fodder in increasingly punishing and cruel mind games titled “Humiliate the Hosts,” “Get the Guests,” “Hump the Hostess,” and “Bringing Up Baby.” It all amounts to an excruciatingly painful shitshow and marvelously orchestrated display of schadenfreude, a German term coined in the mid-1800s that refers to the pleasure one derives from the misfortunes of others.

With this production taking place in the intimate Trinity Playhouse in Downtown Austin, the City Theatre company puts the audience directly in the line of fire. So close are the performers – made even more so by director Karen Sneed’s tendency to push them to the edge of the performance space – that there should be a splash zone for the flying gin, spewed insults, and shattered egos.

Key to a successful Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is having a gritty, foul-mouthed, ball-busting Martha who can unleash violent rants and merciless barbs, emasculate George and Nick while in the process of seducing them, and then earnestly bare her frailty and deep-rooted self-loathing. Meredith O’Brien is perfect in the role. She creates a Martha that is as complicated as she is compelling. It is almost impossible to take your eyes off her during the production.

Equally important is having a pathetic George wallow in his own mediocrity and misery, and fold under Martha’s hard-hitting humiliation, only to match and then best her fury with bitter arrogance, astute intelligence, and a keen awareness of the tender spots of her soft underbelly. Rick Smith is brilliant in this role, as if it were written for him. Both he and O’Brien, who shared the City Theatre stage in last year’s Gross Indecency, ride the emotional pendulum that is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? like the seasoned performers they are.

As for their young guests, Carl Kraines and Chiara McCarty are wonderful in these deceptively simple but extremely challenging roles. And they ride that same pendulum with convincing inebriation, consternation, and mounting outrage.

Sneed’s perpetually forward-moving direction keeps the pace lively, while Artistic Director Andy Berkovsky’s scenic and lighting design makes the Sixties-style living room that houses this play look lived-in. The burgundy walls, dark wood furnishings, uninspiring artwork, and lack of windows create a palpable sense of confinement and oppression, which is what this play calls for. Character-defining and period-perfect costuming comes courtesy of Rosalie Oliveri. A perfect storm of production and performance has been created for Albee’s masterpiece. Rather than taking cover from this three-plus-hour downpour, it’s time to get out and get wet.

City Theatre's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?