Lasting Impressions by Florence McDermott

Be Very Afraid—Of George and Martha

It takes chutzpah to present a 1962 play about battling academics and hope audiences will relate. Bigger Dreams Productions, under the direction of Gary E. Stevens, took that chance not long ago when the ensemble presented George and Martha, the eternal couple who love each other but can’t help but tear each other apart.

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” by Edward Albee, seems as timeless as Adam and Eve—if the Garden of Eden were in Hell. It could be a metaphor for the current U.S population, a country ripping itself apart, indivisible but divided. The play’s title, alluding to great literature, sexual identity, mental illness and suicide, speaks to issues we face today. It’s also a cautionary tale about the destructive effects of alcohol. The play evokes the kind of reaction you have when you see a fight—you can’t look at it, but you can’t look away, either.

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” was staged at Oneonta’s Foothills Performing Arts and Civic Center in May. Although the production is over, the evening stays with you long after.

“Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night,” should have been the warning given to audiences bracing for a revival of Albee’s lacerating play. Instead, Martha, the tipsy faculty wife and daughter of the college president, uses another famous Bette Davis put-down as she enters. Looking around the room, she declares with withering hauteur, “What a dump!” Martha, already tipsy, goads her exhausted husband, George, with a challenge to name the movie where Davis uttered that famous line. When George demurs, saying he’s tired, she hammers him with a barrage of invective.

“Oh, George, what a cluck you are! You’re a cluck!”

Martha yells with the force of a diva reaching for the balcony. When she lambasts George’s lack of sociability at the party they just attended, he retorts loudly, the fire finally lit, “Do you want me to go around braying at everyone, like you do?”

Martha objects, of course, but continues to bray throughout the scene, finally getting George’s attention when she mentions a new faculty couple are coming over for drinks, even though it’s 1:30 in the morning. George objects but intuits the reason for the invitation—the professor is young and handsome, a potential conquest for Martha. Her insult, “cluck,” easily slips into “cuck,” short for cuckold, exactly what George has been over the years to a succession of young, ambitious professors who want to gain favor with the college president’s daughter.

The invective rises until Martha screams, “F*** you,” as the door opens to Nick and Honey. Most people would flee, but Nick wants to climb the faculty ladder and Honey has no choice but to join him—the faculty wife, who’s an enabler of her husband’s ambitions. The couple work as foils to George and Martha and as echoes of their younger selves, reminding them of lost opportunities. The length of the play, three hours, makes the audience feel like they are in the moment with the characters, purposely causing discomfort to witness a battle of wills. The actors inhabit their roles, and the drama rests on the standout performances of George and Martha, leaving little room for anyone else.

Despite the constraints, Nick and Honey, played by Nick Kocieniewski and Evelyn Kinnear, were convincing as the couple trapped into becoming props in the ongoing battle between the two main characters. Unaware that their failed fertility and lopsided power dynamic—she has money and he doesn’t—echo their hosts, they are forced to witness their own futures. It’s a cautionary tale and they struggle to figure out if they can change their fates to avoid the bitterness ahead.

Maria Manzano Johnson gave life to Martha with the self-confidence the role demands. Her seething Martha made it impossible to take your eyes off her, despite the wrecking ball she has become. Her infidelities, her mockery of George’s lack of ambition and her drinking don’t push her husband away, as much as she tries. When Martha is completely drunk at the end and confesses George is the only person who’s made her happy and must be punished for loving her, the pathos is almost too much to take. It’s hard to look at a woman who has admitted her misery is of her own making. Kudos to Maria for her incredible performance.

Tom Russo’s George starts off as the weary husband trying to deflect his wife’s anger, and engages our sympathy. Tired and defeated by too much Martha, too much booze, and too much failure, we feel his pain and want her to stop hectoring him. The tables turn later, when Tom becomes the George who is the equal of Martha, his powerful voice rising to match hers. He becomes larger and larger and, finally, he becomes the destroyer, the man who shatters his wife’s illusions. The transformation from cuckold to king is complete, making us understand why Martha will never leave him.

Bigger Dreams Productions’ next performance, “The Gazebo,” will run in August.

Florence McDermott is the editor of the Rotary Club of Cooperstown’s newsletter, “The Oil Can,” and an avid theater buff.