Yale’s Not Afraid Of ​“Virginia Woolf”

Edward Albee’s 1962 play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a classic of American theater. Its depiction of a middle-aged academic couple at a New England university joined by a younger couple for a night of nonstop drinking seems tailor-made for Yale, where James Bundy, the dean of the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale and artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theatre, directs a revival both respectful and gripping, through Oct. 29. It’s a play full of shifts in sympathy and understanding, as we realize — somewhat uncomfortably — that unlikeable people may have earned their manner from deep hurts and sorrows.

René Augesen, previously at Yale Rep in her memorable turn as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, takes on another classic American theater role: Martha, an intense and mercurial character who has been notably assayed by Uta Hagen, Elizabeth Taylor and Kathleen Turner, among others. Augesen’s strong portrayal owes not a little — including wardrobe (Kyle J. Artone, costumes) — to Taylor’s Academy-Award-winning depiction in Mike Nichols’ excellent film version from 1966, though there’s plenty to be gained by watching a vibrant actress bring Martha to life again onstage. 

Albee’s writing is of such high quality that slight twists and new leverage can be found in almost any line. Augesen runs the full gamut: brash, assertive and vulgar for the most part, but also contrite, confused, and desperately trying to stay afloat in the world of ​“fun and games” proffered by her younger husband, George, an associate professor swamped in the history department of the college Martha’s father runs.

Dan Donahue’s George — in a line that includes Richard Burton, Bill Irwin and Tracy Letts, among others — is self-involved and insecure, tending to hug objects such as liquor bottles and record albums, and apt to rub his hands together while plotting where to take the evening next. Thwarted early in his career, George is a seemingly ​“ineffectual type” who chafes at the expected ambition his wife foists upon him and counters with recondite allusions and edgy entertainments.

Like Martha, George is changeable and erratic, though Donahue rarely seeks or finds the deep pathos in the part, nor its more arch and egotistical aspects. To feel the full brunt of the assault of Martha on his senses, we need to believe in the wounds George still feels. They are less in evidence here than his anxious tit-for-tat with his harridan wife. Donahue, who has played Iago, is more convincing as a conniving master of ceremonies. But as the characterizations between George and Martha turn on a dime, these two fine actors manage the twists and turns with fascinating aplomb. It’s a supercharged evening of theatrics, fully realized on a well-appointed set (Miguel Urbino, scenic design).

Into this den of knives come Nick (Nate Janis) and Honey (Emma Pfitzer Price); he’s a good-looking new biology department hire, she’s his ​“slim-hipped” wife, daughter of an itinerant preacher and easily nauseated by her own nerves. Janis deadpans a lot and does truculent well — necessarily! — while Price unleashes a great inane giggle and manages to underline how odd Honey truly is. I suspect that she’s not meant to do much other than depict a comic flightiness fairly common in those times, but, with time, the role seems as fraught with delusions and assertions as the larger roles. (In fact, Honey gets short-changed here, losing a key scene before the second intermission and thus a participation in the final scene that should be more motivated and devastating as stage-managed by George.)

The younger couple’s integration into their hosts’ world is both bumptious and bathetic, having to do with erotic rivalry, professional self-assertion, and the kind of fascination that sucks us into any display of emotional extremes. They are in way over their heads.

With the play’s title — a joke on ​“who’s afraid of the big bad wolf” — we may feel ourselves addressed by a kind of dare, depending on what we take ​“Virginia Woolf” to mean, in context. The highbrow, the literary, the modernist, as opposed to naturalist tradition? Or maybe it’s more personal: Viriginia Woolf, distressed by mental problems likely aggravated by incestuous sexual abuse in her youth, committed suicide at 59. In any case, the main implication of the title is all about vulnerability — those three little pigs so sure they have nothing to fear, then watch out!

Albee’s play depicts a wide range of vulnerability with razor-sharp precision, wielding with glee a mighty gift for satire as he reveals secrets and unmasks vanities. Time was, the audience for this sort of thing (highbrow, literary, etc.) was more or less ready to see themselves skewered, for sport, as theater. It was a spectacle with the possibility of catharsis, where the blood and guts onstage finds its correlation in the lives of the viewers. That’s a bigger if, perhaps, today.

For evidence, take a look at the Yale Rep’s ​“content advisory,” warning of ​“profanity; misogynist and racist language and slurs; sexually explicit language; sexual situations; and violence, which is in the context of an intimate partner relationship.” It also points out that some slurs are ​“anti-AAPI, anti-Arab, and anti-Latinx,” and ​“the action of the play contains acts of orientalism and the fetishization of Asian cultures” (they missed the Irish brogue I guess). But why stop there? The play dates from a time when the fact that psychopathology could be applied to everyday life seemed like the ​“open sesame” to getting all the ugliness out in the open. The explicitness, the slurs, the violence both physical and verbal, a view of educated Whites sniping at any culture they either fear or misunderstand or both, while lambasting themselves and each other for every slight that smacks of losing status — such is the arsenal that the new permissiveness granted Albee but which his play ultimately treats as mere workable naturalistic context.

What gives the play its gravitas is its grasp of how all that ​“game-playing” — as in, saying things that offend because they offend — is just subterfuge. What does it mask? Warning: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? deals with need and fear and sorrow and deceit and regret and unforgettable, maybe unforgivable, everyday blows to human dignity, and all the ways, none adequate, ​“we” devise to cope. Such as jests, games, fantasy and play-acting. George, in his more pretentious moments, feels called upon to mourn for civilization. O cursèd spite that he should believe himself its spokesman.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? run at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel St., through Oct. 29. Showtimes are at 7:30 and 2:30 to allow for the two intermissions required by the script. Visit the theater’s website for tickets and more information.