Theatre review: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Gate Theatre, Dublin
Edward Albee’s 1962 masterpiece was denied a Pulitzer because some of the award’s directors were reluctant to laud such a “dirty play”. Yet it is this very quality that keeps Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? fresh to the jaded, contemporary sensibility.
George (Denis Conway) and Martha (Fiona Shaw) may not shock as much as they used to, but the sharpness of their exchanges, their teetering hysteria, their pent-up range, their fraying uselessly against the restraints of middle-aged life: All that is easily recognisable; and it’s a credit to director David Grindley that this production is so alive to that, without decontextualising the world of the play.
