The Peak, Simon Fraser University's Student Newspaper since 1965, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6, e-mail: epeak@mail.peak.sfu.ca, phone: (604) 291-3597 fax: (604) 291-3786
Volume 95, Issue 8 February 24, 1997 Arts 

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

by clea ainsworth

directed by Susan Cox

Below the shallow tension of social pleasantries lies the gaping, festering wound that is otherwise known as human nature. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf picks and prods at this wound, allowing it to fester. The play makes it clear that we, as humans, sometimes ignore our potential for lechery and excess, or at least underestimate what people will do in order to maintain a facade. What this play points out best are the ends people will go to to layer illusion and lies, in order to preserve their dignity and pride. Ironically, dignity and pride are cast away when the means meets the end.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is more of what theatre ought to be. It's insidious to the point where you can't help being drawn in and dragged through George and Martha's "games". The entire play takes place in the couple's living room, as they "entertain" George's nemisis (Nick) and his wife (Honey). The games which the couples play become more and more personal and disturbing. Soon, teasing turns into chiding, and chiding turns into bitter verbal assaults. By the end of the night the two couples are locked into a viscous power struggle where there are no allies, no comraderies, and no mercy. The play revolves around these power politics, each character sharing in the gruesome unearthing, while feverishly waiting to escape their position as prey and move into that of predator.

The set added a great deal to the audiences' claustrophobia and their sick attachment to the characters. The utter hopelessness of the character's situation and the inevitability of their war is emphasized by the chaos of Martha and George's living room: a chaos of old books, ashtrays, empty liquor bottles and brickabrack. This, in turn, becomes symbolic as the set visually reflects the emotional baggage and clutter of the character's lives-- those both brought from the outside, and those who created the environment in the first place.

Tom McBeath (George) plays his role as the apathetic professor to the fullest. His smooth conceit and his calm malignancy really carry the undertones of venom throughout the play. Nora McLellan (Martha) perfects the hateful, emotionally wasted housewife and plays off George's quiet anger beautifully. Martha's antagonistic laugh and her unrelenting heckling leaves the audience cringing with disbelief. Jillian Fargey (Honey) played the effervescent pink-shellacked, Betty Crocker, "angel tit[ed]" darling. Her sheer banality and gullibleness works off of Nick's (played by Christopher Hunt) shrewd social ladder climbing/jigiloism. The point of tension in the play is that these characters are constantly working off one another to attain their own goals.

Yes, everyone jokes about relationships gone sour and people they know who would sooner eat their own feces than lay eyes on their ex-partner again. But where else is this utter hatred and vile despise encapsulated so well (and so truthfully) but in this production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It might just make you reconsider a few things.


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