The Stage

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Published Monday 26 September 2011 at 09:35 by Andrew Liddle

The Octagon’s reputation for cutting-edge American drama continues to grow apace. Even though Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is almost 50 years old, it has lost none of its tremendous power to engage, still less its capacity to shock.

A lengthy play with two intervals, it never seemed a second too long, thanks to the bravura efforts of the four actors, under the taut direction of David Thacker, beginning his third year here.

Thacker, who chooses to do it fully in the round, knows a thing or two about the genre, having been Arthur Miller’s British director of choice. His approach, as ever, is subtly non-interventionist, allowing the play’s own strange rhythms to ebb and flow, building and subsiding like hysteria.

George Irving, still probably best known as Anton Meyer in Holby City, is such an accomplished actor that his flawless New England accent, as embittered college professor, George, is radically different from the one he used, here, a couple of years ago, as Joe Keller in Miller’s All My Sons.

Not the least of Margot Leicester’s exquisite accomplishments, as Martha, is her ability to become more raddled as the night goes on, as she topes and verbally fences with husband, George. If she is not quite as cynical as he is, she is certainly no less offensive.

Kieran Hill, rapidly becoming a Bolton stalwart, gives another eye-catching performance as Nick, the young Biology lecturer married to the Honey, whose cloying sickliness is portrayed splendidly by Tammy Joelle.

For the four of them, it certainly is a night of hell - and the audience, whether laughing out loud or stunned to embarrassed silence, are hugely entertained.

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