The alcohol-fuelled mind games that take place in Edward Albee’s masterpiece can be read on many levels. There is a definite biographical link to Albee’s adoptive mother and father, as well as a political parable with the names George and Martha being shared by the parents of the American experiment. In fact, the failure of both marriages to produce children may foreshadow the current erosion of the ideals espoused by the nation’s founders. The most common reading, however, concerns the corrosive power of illusion and the devastating pain of truth. All George and Martha’s games weaponise both, exposing the darkness of the human condition while suggesting that a cruel, desperate need for love is its only antidote. While it is difficult not to compare this production with the film version, in which all four principal actors were nominated for Academy Awards, the current cast holds its own in such illustrious company. Josh Dylan is suitably cocksure as Nick, the ambitious biology professor determined to make his mark at the small rural university run by Martha’s father, while Phoebe Horn is wonderfully wide-eyed as his naive wife, Honey. The latter is not an easy part to play, as it is all too easy for Honey’s innocence to seem false. However, Horn manages to make the character’s guilelessness quite convincing while allowing glimpses of the insecurity beneath it. As the browbeaten George, Billy Crudup is brilliantly craven, his apparent submission concealing a capacity for calculated cruelty. He gradually reveals the steel beneath George’s meek exterior, making his eventual attacks on Martha and their two guests all the more merciless. The drama, however, is dominated by Martha, and Gillian Anderson rises to the occasion. Her Martha is ferocious, volatile and desperately vulnerable, using aggression and sexual bravado to mask the emotional wounds beneath them. Anderson captures both the exhilaration and exhaustion of a woman who has turned cruelty into a form of intimacy. If there is a shortcoming, it is the unevenness in the portrayal of Martha’s drunkenness. Playing intoxication convincingly is difficult when the character remains as articulate as Martha. Indeed, at times Anderson seems to forget just how much alcohol she is supposed to have consumed. Consequently, the shifts between lucidity and inebriation do not always feel entirely consistent. However, carried by Albee’s brilliant dialogue, the play is always riveting, Its cruel wit makes the audience laugh even as the sheer viciousness of the interactions shocks and unsettles. Although, at over three hours, one can become inured to the relentless emotional assault, the play’s length allows the layers of deception to be excruciatingly stripped away. The slowly revolving stage mirrors the shifting power between the characters as illusion after illusion is dismantled. What begins as a vicious marital game ultimately becomes something more painful: an examination of how much truth can be endured when the illusions that sustain us are taken away.
Rated: ★★★★
Reviewed by J.C.
Photo by Johan Persson
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