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Credits

Opening Date: Mar 20, 2005; Lead Performance: Kathleen Turner; Writer: Edward Albee; Director: Anthony Page
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By Scott Brown
Scott Brown
Scott Brown
Scott Brown is a senior writer for EW and a frequent contributor to National Public Radio -- he has the tote bag to prove it

Forty-three years after its premiere, Woolf still has all of its giddy, vicious thrill. Edward Albee's apocalyptic living-room purgatorio (even lacking the profane countercultural wallop it originally packed) remains one of the most dazzling displays of verbal blood sport ever to stain the American stage. Middle-aged marrieds George (Bill Irwin) and Martha (Kathleen Turner) are beyond tropes, beyond types: They're gods — the old warring, fornicating, sacrifice-demanding kind — barely concealed within shabby shells of college-town tweed. When these ancients invite a Young Turk faculty stud (David Harbour) and his wisp of a wife (Mireille Enos) into their gladiatorial arena, the fur flies, badinage sings, and truth stings. The performances are so good, they're inseparable, a shrieking string quartet of cataclysmically colliding lives. And despite its age, Woolf still spryly violates our ultimate taboo: It glories in the ruins of empire.


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Posted Mar 28, 2005
 

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