Review: Group shows no fear hunting ‘Woolf’

Marilyn LaRocque

Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2002 | 8:16 a.m.

Edward Albee's Tony Award-winning "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" opened at the Billy Rose Theatre in New York City on Oct. 13, 1962. Forty years later, in the Nevada Conservatory Theatre production at Judy Bayley Theatre at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the story's themes still resonate (albeit not as shockingly or innovatively) as in the 1960s. And Albee's brilliant dialogue still stimulates the mind.

Albee raises the issue of failure -- failure to achieve, to communicate. He uses sex as a weapon and explores sexual failure. He muses on truth and illusion, games and gamesmanship (or gameswomanship), and marriage and family relationships. For added zest he throws in death and murder, religion, American values and history (or humanity) versus science.

It takes nearly 3 1/2 hours and three acts (titled "Fun and Games," "Walpurgisnacht" and "The Exorcism"), to exit this complex psychological and philosophical maze. An old wood-framed, bell-curved mantle clock chronicles the attrition in real time.

The Judy Bayley Theatre has no proscenium arch, hence no curtain. So the audience senses the tone of the play as soon as it enters. All the action takes place in, or going in and out of, George and Martha's living room.

Set designer John Santangelo adroitly depicts the stale aura of academic clutter and musty indifference. Newspapers litter the floor. Ponderous books are stacked by two easy chairs; a man's gray cardigan sweater is tossed aimlessly over the back of one. A knitted afghan hangs over the back of the sofa, and something white is nearly falling off one corner (It's a woman's slip, which Martha stuffs under a sofa cushion in anticipation of Nick and Honey's visit.)

So universal is the scope of the play nobody has a last name. George, 46, is an associate professor of history at a New England college at New Carthage, an aptly named town since the epic battles of the play's characters raise ghosts of Hannibal and the Carthaginians, who bravely but futilely challenged the Romans.

Martha, his wife, is 52, six years older than George, a fact with which he repeatedly taunts her. She's the daughter of the college president and had high hopes of her husband succeeding her father. Instead, his career has stagnated.

On the other hand, Nick, a 30-year-old biology teacher, is young, aggressive and ambitious. His research into genetic manipulation bothers George, who thinks it's a threat to humanity and will result in carbon-copy people. He married his wife, Honey, 26, because they thought she was pregnant (she wasn't) and because she would inherit a lot of money from her preacher father. She seems to be out of touch and vomits frequently as a means of escaping a variety of realities.

All four characters have been drinking heavily at a party given by Martha's father. They continue carousing at George and Martha's home. (If their consumption had been real liquor, they would have passed out before the middle of the first act, yet they don't even slur their words.) The evening degenerates into brutal psychological games and philosophical debates.

The cast pairs two strong Equity actors, Ruth Ann Phimister as Martha and Steve Vinovich as George, and two very competent UNLV students: Annikki Larsson, an undergraduate as Honey; and Sean C. Boyd, a Master of Fine Arts acting student, as Nick. (He also choreographed the fight sequences.)

Vinovich is the standout of the four. He is convincing whatever his mood or mode. His range of emotions, expressions and gestures and interpretation of lines is expert -- from teasing to terrifying; offhand to menacing.

Most of the sardonic one-liners are his. He describes Prohibition as "bad for liquor distributors but good for cops and crooks." When Nick tells George, "I've never hit an older man before," George jibes, "Only younger men and women and children and birds?" When George hollers to ask Martha where she is, she replies, "I'm necking with one of the guests." George immediately skewers her with, "Which one?"

Phimister is very good, but her Martha tends to be more shrill and shrewish than visceral and aggressive. She's also more awkward than convincing as a seductress. However, she's believable, and her soliloquy about their "son," while George is droning the Mass for the Dead in the background, is particularly effective.

Boyd is a promising young actor. He carries his good looks and muscular build well. His interaction with George develops intensity and timing as the play progresses. Calculated and self-serving or not, his yielding to Martha's sexual advances brought a gasp from the audience.

Larsson is pretty and lissome and floated through her part in a perfectly played, self-centered, sometimes petulant, fog. She occasionally allowed the fog to part, revealing the frightened, insecure Honey within. One hopes she doesn't become typecast as a brainless blond.

All four actors gave full value to Albee's wit and words. The acoustics and intimate size of Bayley Theatre make microphones unnecessary, and all the dialogue was audible and understandable.