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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Edward Albee
Apollo Theatre, London, spring 2006

The Virginia Woolf (Albee's play, not the dull/moany/held-in privileged yet complaining writer!) currently at the Apollo Theatre -- though only for another month or so -- has so many things going for it. It's a very good play. An old-fashioned, properly crafted, well-made play. It's in a perfectly pleasant, average West End theatre -- though the leg room in this production was, as if by magic, so much more comfortable than almost identical seats in the same building only three months earlier when I spent a good third of the Mary Stewart semi-comatose watching Harriet Walter and Janet McTeer shout at each other in Phillida Lloyd's over-rated production. It's at the touristy end of Shaftsbury Avenue, but that does mean you can pop in to Kulu Kulu on Brewer Street on your way, for ludicrously cheap and very yummy Japanese before the show. And it has a stonking cast. All too often this play is performed as if it were written merely for whoever's playing George and Martha to show off, and as if the regularly under-whelming characterisations of Nick and Honey don't matter at all. They really do, and a playwright of Albee's calibre wouldn't have had them there if they didn't matter. David Harbour and Mireille Enos more than fill in the blanks with their work here, and Enos's brittle inebriation especially is way beyond the usual comedy turn.

Like so many plays that have become films though, this one is all too often rated by the public in comparison to the celluloid version. So, what can I say? Hyperion to a satyr? Sublime to the ridiculous? And all in Anthony Page's production's favour. Taylor and Burton would have been wiped off the stage here. Yes, it's true that Burton was pretty damn sexy in almost anything, and Liz Taylor, at that time in her life, would have looked gorgeous in a sack -- over her head even -- but it wasn't a good film for either of them, and they acted like they knew it. Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin on the other hand, clearly know what they're doing. And because they do, where Albee's play can sometimes come across as a misogynist attack on any aging woman -- when, as is too often, Martha is played merely as an nasty, spiteful alcoholic -- here it becomes the passionate tennis match it ought to be. This is also in no small part due to the fact that, despite the press attention, and despite the fact that she's bloody brilliant, this production is not at all just a Kathleen Turner vehicle. They're all good in it, and it's all good. There's no director showing off with a host of theatrical devices -- no video screens, no movie-level soundtrack. Just some writing (ie. no bloody 'verbatim' that some writer is claiming as their own work!) and some acting. Nice.

However, should you be after a Turner vehicle (and this is TartCity after all) this production would be a damn good one. Here's what Ms Turner is not -- she's not a middle aged actress with the body of a thirty year old transsexual. She's not a woman who doesn't look her age. She's not a stick insect. She's not a woman who doesn't look like she knows what real life is. She's not a woman who thinks acting is screaming and throwing herself around the furniture. She is -- strong, powerful, radiating intelligence and the beauty she's still, rightly, famed for -- and, what's more, on the night I saw her, suffering from the laryngitis that had her off stage a few nights later, she was even huskier-sexy than usual, and played a full three hours without ever relying on audience sympathy to get her through. Really old-fashioned, really 'proper' actor.

So yes, the whole thing's good. All four actors, the writing of course, this particular highly praised Broadway production that has transferred almost wholesale to London, but if you like your Tart tough and delicate, mean and smart, gorgeous and wicked -- and blessedly free of the boring old shouting that all too often passes for acting, especially in this play -- then Kathleen Turner as the Martha-Tart is perfect. (ps -- the Paretsky was a bad idea all round. Let's not hold it against them.)


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