WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? comes to The Gamm Theatre in January

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre opens the new year with Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? next month.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? runs January 25-February 18 at The Gamm Theatre, 1245 Jefferson Blvd., Warwick, R.I. Tickets: $55-$65; preview performances (January 25-28) just $38. Information about Friday night pay-what-you-wish tickets, as well as discounts for seniors, students, groups and more at gammtheatre.org/discounts. Tickets: 401-723-4266 or gammtheatre.org/virginia

Steve Kidd, who directed Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children last season at The Gamm, returns to helm this production. Gamm Artistic Director Tony Estrella and veteran Gamm actor Jeanine Kane (Grace in Faith Healer) are George and Martha, the bitter, aging couple at the center of Albee’s Tony Award-winning play. Gunnar Manchester (Maks in Ironbound) and Gabrielle McCauley (Urzula in Describe the Night) are their young houseguests, unwittingly drawn into a boozy evening of wild barbs and a fracturing marriage.

Kidd called Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf? “one of the most important American plays of all time because, among other things, it was the first of its kind to make us laugh, cry and question often all at the same time.”

“Our incredible cast and designers are fashioning an experience that brings this singular play of the past to the present with remarkable clarity, hilarity and urgency,” Kidd said. “It is personal, powerful, startlingly current and as shocking as the original production of 1962. To spend an evening with the dysfunctional duo of George and Martha and their guests in the small, intimate space of The Gamm will be a roller-coaster ride through love, loss, belly-laughs, gasps and edge-of-your seat entertainment.”

ABOUT WHO’S AFRAID OF Virginia Woolf?

From its Tony Award-winning debut for best play (1963) to its many revivals on the Modern Stage, Edward Albee’s masterful 3-act play is an explosively comedic and harrowing masterpiece. On the heels of a university faculty party, middle-aged professor George and his wife, Martha, invite campus newcomers Nick and Honey over for drinks. What starts as harmless patter escalates to a full night of vicious, booze-fueled barbs, as the unwitting young couple is drawn into their hosts’ all-out marital warfare. By sunrise, all secrets are laid bare and none of them will ever be the same. A landmark of the American theater and arguably Albee’s best work, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? explores the illusions we create in the face of painful truths and life’s uncertainty.