Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? West End Reviews

Actors start your engines. Edward Albee’s masterpiece for four lives and dies on the horsepower of its performers. Albee does not batter you with ideological interrogation. Its sparks fly from watching it performs smash and bash into each other, la...

Actors start your engines. Edward Albee’s masterpiece for four lives and dies on the horsepower of its performers. Albee does not batter you with ideological interrogation. Its sparks fly from watching it performs smash and bash into each other, lashing each other with venomous cruelty in one breath, then licking each other’s wounds in the next. If this is a psychological demolition derby of a play, then Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup are monster trucks roaring with ferocity.

Anderson and Crudup can hold their own against that landmark adaptation of the play about George, a middle-aged history professor with a sagging academic libido, and Martha, his frustrated, ceaselessly needling wife. They are confident performers and...

Anderson and Crudup can hold their own against that landmark adaptation of the play about George, a middle-aged history professor with a sagging academic libido, and Martha, his frustrated, ceaselessly needling wife. They are confident performers and it makes sense that this 1962 American classic about conjugal warfare is taken on by two Americans, albeit under the aegis of British directorial powerhouse Marianne Elliott. If Elliott’s previous production, Les Liasons Dangereuses at the National Theatre, had what some considered an anaemic connection between its leading lovers, there is no shortage of sparks and sparring for the central couple here. They are shouty and jousting, although it does not feel dangerous or emotionally eviscerating enough between them for rather too long.

Crudup’s pedantic George is a revelation. He is bristling with resentment towards his lot in life: after being bumped up the college hierarchy during the war, he now bemoans the return of his colleagues (“not one son of a bitch got killed”) and...

Crudup’s pedantic George is a revelation. He is bristling with resentment towards his lot in life: after being bumped up the college hierarchy during the war, he now bemoans the return of his colleagues (“not one son of a bitch got killed”) and is threatened by the arrival of young academics like Nick who represent change. He carries the weight of wasted expectation, as “heir apparent” to his father-in-law (who is head of the university). Crudup excels in showing how these disappointments (as a husband, son-in-law, professor) chip away at George’s manhood. He wears a mask, lightly passing cruel judgements, asking intrusive questions, and malevolently pursuing his guests like prey, but even he has flashes of vulnerability: shattering a bottle, wrapping his hand around Martha’s neck, and growling like a caged animal when he hears her sounds of lovemaking with another man.

Marianne Elliott’s direction is full of sensitive, thoughtful touches. From the very start, she makes it clear that this marriage between George, who is bogged down in the history department of a New England college where Martha’s father is the p...

Marianne Elliott’s direction is full of sensitive, thoughtful touches. From the very start, she makes it clear that this marriage between George, who is bogged down in the history department of a New England college where Martha’s father is the president, is not a dead thing. There’s a spark between them. Anderson’s Martha may jeer and bray at him, but Crudup’s shambling George can make her laugh, and she genuinely wants him to kiss her as the guests arrive.

Anderson is simply formidable – a swaggering, gin-swilling, sexually brazen, emotionally reckless, barely contained wildcat. Crudup, in a beautifully relaxed, startlingly detailed performance, affects an air of equally devastating insouciance. Thei...

Anderson is simply formidable – a swaggering, gin-swilling, sexually brazen, emotionally reckless, barely contained wildcat. Crudup, in a beautifully relaxed, startlingly detailed performance, affects an air of equally devastating insouciance. Their appallingly entertaining, lacerating gameplay lays bare the imprisoning truths of American small-town conservatism – she, trapped by the suffocating conventions of her gender; he, by the impossible expectations put upon his.

If Anderson is good, Crudup is phenomenal. The US character actor has been a West End fixture of late, with his solo show Harry Clarke and that odd stage version of High Noon. Neither were particularly amazing, but I think that’s more because neith...

If Anderson is good, Crudup is phenomenal. The US character actor has been a West End fixture of late, with his solo show Harry Clarke and that odd stage version of High Noon. Neither were particularly amazing, but I think that’s more because neither was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, not any fault of Crudup as an actor. Here he is tremendous as the at first urbane, likeable George, who seems like the milder, more sophisticated partner to the coarser, angrier Martha. Squint and he’s the victim in the marriage. But as the night wears on, there’s something sinister about his self-containment and his inability to match Martha’s outbursts: his restraint becomes ominous and nakedly manipulative as he prods and probes at a drunken Nick, spinning him fanciful stories and savouring each drop as he gets the dirt on the young couple’s marriage. Crudup is a model of restraint and nuance and that just makes his George all the more sinister – a virus quietly infecting everyone else's brains.

Miriam Buether’s cleverly conceived set traps them all in a circular conversation pit that gives the impression of a gladiatorial arena, a wheel of sandy carpet hemmed in by glistening walnut fittings. A ring-shaped LED display rises overhead like ...

Miriam Buether’s cleverly conceived set traps them all in a circular conversation pit that gives the impression of a gladiatorial arena, a wheel of sandy carpet hemmed in by glistening walnut fittings. A ring-shaped LED display rises overhead like a billboard at a sports stadium, presenting scrolling text and horizontal beams of smouldering orange. The whole stage revolves constantly, at first moving with subliminal slowness, but gradually gathering pace until it spins like a whirlpool, a vortex of torment and temptation that Martha and George create around themselves, which drags in anyone unfortunate enough to get too close.

If there’s anything lacking in the delectable set-up it’s that George and Martha’s sozzled sniping all essentially play as “banter”. This becomes a problem as the laughs die down and Elliott’s production settles into one gear. It lacks da...

If there’s anything lacking in the delectable set-up it’s that George and Martha’s sozzled sniping all essentially play as “banter”. This becomes a problem as the laughs die down and Elliott’s production settles into one gear. It lacks danger. We should worry when George smashes a bottle, when Martha lays into him hard, when they embark on a game of “get the guest”. The intimate approach leads Anderson and Crudup to underegg the melodrama that defines George and Martha as much as their wit.