Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

Pittsburgh Public Theater is wrapping up the season with a big splashy mid-Century modern stage classic, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Written by Edward Albee, it won Tony Award for Best Play in 1963 and was considered controversial in its day. Is it on par with the big period stage pieces? Not yet. I’ll explain.

This production featured four actors and one set. Broadway veterans Daniel Jenkins was George and Tasha Lawrence as Martha. Local actors Claire Sabatine is Honey and Dylan Marquis Meyers rounded out the cast as Nick.

The shows clocks in at nearly 3 and a half hours with two short intermissions.

The plot is somewhat straightforward. Martha and George are a middle-aged college faculty couple at an unnamed college. George is on faculty in the history department while Martha’s father is the college President. We are presuming they’ve been married for at least 21 years. After a faculty party, Martha invites a new professor of biology (Nick) and his wife, Honey back to their home for drinks. Honey and Nick were childhood sweethearts, seemingly recently but not newlywed. The foursome spend three and a half hours swilling booze and ripping into each other.

The endurance and fortitude of the four actors is astonishing. Three+ hours of physicality, verbal games, and outright yelling must take a toll. Two leads were in sync and went toe to toe. Honey held her own. The young male role is the weakest in the story overall and this actor just didn’t step as deeply into the role. The character has the fewest redeeming qualities. Maybe he was so good at being an awful character?

This was unusually white casting for a company that’s made some interesting representative choices in recent years. My friend and I discussed how various lines and themes would hit with BIPOC actors in the cast of four. The possibilities are astounding to consider. That’s a missed opportunity to make a classic more socially relevant and interesting to younger audiences. It isn’t as if Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous families were above the fray of this nightmare evening, perhaps just that they weren’t typically on faculty at colleges in the 1950s? Apparently the Albee estate prefers to cast white blue eyed blonds per this story from NPR discussing the impact of the estate refusing to allow a Black actor to be cast as Nick. Nick needs to be an Aryan. Sigh.

The set was the family living room. It was clearly a historic home, but a bit more shabby than I expected. The vibe was a mashup of mid-century modern with cottage core. The rug was a jarring red patten that clashed with the era appropriate teal blues. It looked like a living room cobbled together during the early years of a marriage, not the home of the affluent daughter of the college President.

It is a lot of yelling. A lot.

The reveal is pathetic in the truest sense of the word.

I do not understand why Nick and Honey didn’t just leave. Were they deer in the headlights? Were they curious about their own destiny as a faculty couple? Were they already so unhappy in their own family way (Tolstoy) that watching another couple go round after round was a visceral thrill? Obviously they need to be there to have a play, but there was no evident reason for them to stay.

Our seats were high in the balcony which is unusual for media. But welcome because I did not want to be any closer – or need to be – to that vicious ugly dynamic. I do like sitting up high because if I need to excuse myself, I can return. If you are seated on the stage level, they make you go sit up in the balcony. It isn’t a terrible situation, but one you should know about if you plan to make a first visit. If your seatmate disappears, look up.

It is a performance I’m glad I witnessed, but I wouldn’t see it again unless it were really shaken and stirred. It was big, brassy, definitely ballsy but not brave. Four white affluent people getting blindly drunk, treating each other with contempt to expose the unspoken realities of mid-century white American academic elites is just not that interesting. Perhaps because many of us Gen X and Millenials bore the brunt of those destructive dynamics in our families. If I want a repeat, I can show up for some second cousin’s holiday meal and get a free show with snacks.

So let’s talk about generations. Martha and George are from the GI or Greatest Generation like my grandparents. Honey and Nick are from the Silent Generation like my parents. I’m a solid Gen X at 54. So the play felt entirely familiar to me, but not fresh. How do you convince even younger folx to invest three and a half hours in a play about their great-grandparents without something new to say? To rely on the trope that this is an essential play is like older parents lamenting that none of the kids want the heirloom dining room set or legacy furniture.

I noticed the crowd was shockingly lacking in many gay or queer attendees, but also skewed a bit older than usual. It was definitely a very white audience. This is all disturbing especially given the imminent departure of artistic director Marya Sea Kaminski whose Public debut reexploring Pride and Prejudice shook things up.

Returning to the NPR piece that asks

I don’t know if the Albee estate grasps that when they refuse permission for an African-American actor to appear in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, they turn a great play into a controversy. Any respected theater company who wants to stage Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf will now be asked if they agreed to cast white actors only.

Are we afraid to ask and pierce the illusion of a great, necessary play?

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf runs through Sun, Apr 6, 2025 at the O’Reilly Theater.

Also, look to the next season when the Public engages Ibsen. I am genuinely excited.