Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Posted by Mondschein

"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at the Booth Theatre, October 11, 2012

Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre returns to Broadway with the revival of Edward Albee's play about the battle that is marriage.

It hasn't been all that long since the last Rialto revival with Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin, so I was interested to see what this new production has to offer.  What we get is a solid retelling of the play, much like last season's revival of Death of a Salesman, proving again what a well-made play it is.  Beyond that, there's not much unique in this production.

One thing I did notice, was that Amy Morton's Martha has acceded some of the power to Tracy Letts' George right from the start.  Even though she brays and intimidates, it doesn't land with the same vitriol one usually experiences.  With that opportunity, Mr. Letts' George is now free to wield his sarcasm like a sword, slashing at Martha and their guests.

Speaking of, this Nick (Madison Dirks) and Honey (Carrie Coon), fall right in line behind whoever is spewing the venom.  Mr. Dirks captures the requisite loose athletic demeanor of Nick's football past.  Ms. Coon gives a nice turn as the besotted Honey, though not quite as fragile as other interpretations.

Director Pam MacKinnon keeps things moving fairly well, though there were a couple of slow spots in Act II as the party games transition from "humiliate the husband" to "get the guests."

Todd Rosenthal's large living room set captures the academic environment, but went a little overboard with the stacks of books literally everywhere.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is on an open-ended run.  Tickets here.

Perry Brass: Lost Gay New York: Go See “Making the Boys”

                                                                                 Original cast picture from The Boys in the Band

Last Friday night was I lucky enough to attend a special showing at the Quad Theatre on W. 13th Street in the Village, of Making the Boys, Crayton Robey’s documentary about the creation of The Boys in the Band, Mart Crowley's famous play about a gay birthday party where almost everything hangs out. 

This was really Lost Gay New York, and a keyhole into a world I knew only too well. It’s a wonderful movie, very moving at times, a bit over-long (Robey tries to attach everything gay, cultural, New York, American, queerish, etc. to The Boys in the Band; sometimes it sticks and sometimes it just doesn’t.), but ultimately very rewarding whether you were a life-time fan of the play, or like me, someone for whom the play with its bitchiness and bitterness, held a lot of repulsion and embarrassment, because afterall, aren’t we embarrassed by the truth? And The Boys in the Band is the truth. It’s not the only truth by a long shot, but all of us—OK, I know who you are out there—have been to a party at some time in our lives that ends up with drinking too much, saying too much, and hurting others too much, and we’ve lived to tell the tale. Mart Crowley did live, and told us some things that have taken me a lifetime to understand.

Making the Boys does something that is really important, although it doesn’t always get the message right, at least by me. It sees the most important aspect of the play being that moment when Michael, the host of the party (and I hope I have this speaker right) makes what was, in 1968, a truly life-changing statement: “You are a homosexual, and nothing you do will change that. You were born a homosexual and you will die one.”