ARTSMONDAY: ‘Who’s Afraid?’ Is a Strong, Intense Play

I walked out of the Loeb Ex on Friday feeling as though I had just been through a war—a war that, like all wars, was chaotic and emotionally draining. It took me the entire walk back to the Quad before my muscles could relax.

Two and a half hours of watching a couple with issues can really take it out of you. Under the direction of Daniel J. Wilner ’07, the living-room drama of Edward Albee’s Tony award-winning “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” comes to an unsettlingly real life in the Loeb Experimental Theatre April 27 through May 5. The show is produced by Emily A. Cregg ’09.

Chelsey J. Forbess ’07 and Simon Nicholas ’07 play Martha and George, a couple whose marriage has all but disintegrated. Martha cannot stand George’s incompetence at the university where he teaches history and where her father is the president, and George is almost as sick of Martha’s Daddy-worship as he is of her hatred towards himself.

When a hotshot young professor of biology named Nick (Jack E. Fishburn ’08) and his mousy wife Honey (Elyssa Jakim ’10) move into town, Martha invites them over for some drinks. What begins as an awkward gathering explodes into a game of deceit, violence, and debauchery as Martha and George begin to unveil the dark secrets of their marriage.

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” made its debut in 1962, but the script’s mix of the complex and the comprehensible fits it into any stage at any time, provided there are capable people at the helm. The Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club’s (HRDC) production of the play is proof.

One of the best aspects of this outing is that the set, designed by Todd Weekley, is constructed such that the audience shares the same floor space as the actors. The audience sits on sofas and chairs that line the four walls of Martha and George’s living room.

Most of the drama takes place at center stage, but the actors often move to sit among the audience. It’s a design that could lead to awkward discomfort, but in this production, it worked to perfection. If ever I felt awkward, it was only because I, like Nick and Honey, felt as though I were intruding upon the marital problems of my hosts.

And, boy, did the marital problems of my hosts feel real. Nicholas, as George, visibly develops throughout the play from a bitterly sarcastic, but still calm intellectual into a violent madman. Forbess is alternately psychotic, malicious, and seductive. Indisputably the star of a talented four-person cast, she is Martha: from the sneer on her face to the garish bray of her laugh. The couple’s repertoire vividly etches itself into one’s brain through the screamed, snarled, spat—anything but spoken—dialogue.

Fishburn and Jakim also deserve accolades as supporting actors. Fishburn was appropriately cocky and vapid and Jakim was appropriately meek. Jakim’s nervous giggle especially intensified my sense of being caught in the midst of a family feud.

However, the unrelenting tension of the production is both its greatest strength and weakness.

On the one hand, it showcases the actors’ commendable talents in intensely complicated and poignant roles. But on the other, it has a desensitizing effect. I was so numb by the third act that I couldn’t even appreciate the final blow, which ought to be the most striking: when George reveals Martha’s final secret. I wanted to be blown out of my seat, but was too emotionally drained to respond beyond an “Oh.”

Overall, the tension of the play may be overkill. I kept on looking for a dramatic peak, but never found it—not because of a lack of drama, but because the drama is perpetually full-blast. I thought that the play had climaxed when Nicholas attempted to strangle Forbess in a grippingly violent scene. But a half hour later, and lo and behold, there is another strangulation attempt. So, perhaps the blame for the constant intensity lies with the script.

Nonetheless, the production manages to slip in the occasional moment of humor. Forbess gets credit for providing the bulk of the much-needed comic relief. Her crass voice alone—not to mention her donkey’s laugh—made me giggle more than once. Nicholas’ sarcasm and passive-aggressive humor also helped alleviate the production’s intensity.

The tension in HRDC’s production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” didn’t add any lighthearted fun to my weekend. It was an expertly-executed production whose actors so realistically conveyed their depression that it made me think seriously about the state of the institution of marriage.

—Reviewer April B. Wang can be reached at abwang@fas.harvard.edu.