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PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: Who 's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: George vs. Martha in Three-Act Rounds
By Harry Haun
21 Mar 2005
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From Top: Kathleen Turner, Bill Iriwn, David Harbour, Mirielle Enos, Edward Albee, Daryl Roth & Scott Rudin, Paula Vogel, Cherry Jones, Adriane Lenox, Mike Bloomberg, Anna Deveare Smith, George Grizzard, Marian Seldes, Charles Busch, Anthony Page
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | Made to order for those of us who do not have enough marital disharmony in our lives, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? nestled into the Longacre for its third Broadway outing March 20, with Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin the abrasive Everycouple who verbally duke it out to dawn's early light, "exercising . . . walking what's left of our wits."
Yes, back among us, in fighting form, are George and Martha (not Washington, just representatively American)—she, a college president's daughter; he, "an old bog in the history department"—and they've invited fresh blood to their lair, a young faculty couple new to the campus (Nick and Honey: David Harbour and Mirelle Enos) for some early ayem fun 'n' games and lots of drinks. It's a long day's journey into a sobering dawn.
The curtain went up at 5 PM because the playwright had a plane to catch. Edward Albee was last seen right before curtain—while Elaine Stritch was commandeering seats in the last row and barking seating instructions ("Nobody is sitting there! You are sitting there!")—at the back of the theatre, huddling with his favorite "lunatic producer," Elizabeth I. McCann, and some of her Grade-A co-producers (Daryl Roth, Terry Allen Kramer, Scott Rudin, Roger Berlind, James L. Nederlander and Nick Simunek). He zipped backstage to wish the cast well, then took off on The Wings of Man for North Carolina.
"He's teaching at the North Carolina School of the Arts," explained McCann. "It's an engagement he made eight months ago. He has to be in class tomorrow at nine o'clock."
Pity. Albee's presence was felt throughout the three-act, three-hour verbal donnybrook that followed and, most acutely, at the tumultuous curtain call. Time has been very good to his masterpiece, which has outgrown its initial controversy and assumed its rightful place among the great plays. And Albee has gone on to win three Pulitzer Prizes—without Woolf being one of them. The faint-hearted Pulitzer judges opted not to give an award that year rather than honor a foul-talking drama. (Act One begins with "Jesus H. Christ!" and ends with a simple "Jesus"; in between, and beyond, is a confetti splattering of colorful expletives which zing and sting.) If you count this as his invisible Pulitzer Prize, Albee equals the all-time record of four, set (posthumously) by Eugene O'Neill.
Paula Vogel wound up being the designated Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of the evening, and she arrived all-smiles. "I'm really excited about this," she bubbled. "This is really more of a religious experience for those of us who love American theatre."
And more worship-ables are on the way, dotting the immediate horizon. The next American classic to reach Broadway will bow March 22—Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie—at the Barrymore, and it's followed April 26 by Williams' equally stunning A Streetcar Named Desire. Jessica Lange's Amanda Wingfield in the former and Natasha Richardson's Blanche DuBois in the latter should give Turner's Martha a run for a Tony.
These are the three tall women of the Broadway season so, understandably, Cherry Jones moseyed across the street from the Walter Kerr to check out her competition. (Critics have lavishly praised her performance of the strong-willed nun in Doubt, John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer possibility which officially transfers to Broadway at the end of the month.) "I'm being a good neighbor," Jones slyly insisted as she entered the Longacre.
Adriane Lenox, one of her Doubt co-stars and also a likely Tony contender, got caught up in the opening-night log-jam but didn't attend. "I can't," she said. "They just gave us the tickets today. I wish I had known because I would have tried to free myself for this."
Also fresh from her matinee, having blown out her candles less than an hour before, was the Laura of The Glass Menagerie, Sarah Paulson. "I'm here for Kathleen," she announced. "We did a movie-of-the week together 17 years ago called Things That Last. She played my mother, and Colm Feore, who's in Julius Caesar [Cassius to Denzel Washington's Brutus] played my father. The whole family's on Broadway now."
Although it's not exactly "a date play," Mayor Mike Bloomberg and his main squeeze, Diane Taylor, led the celebs list on opening night. Also attending: Jessye Norman, Edmund White, Anna Deveare Smith, Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman.
Leading the Friends of Albee brigade were the original Nick and the matinee Martha: George Grizzard and Stritch, who co-starred in the 1996 revival of Albee's A Delicate Balance (he got the Tony, and she got nominated). Then there was Marian Seldes, who got a Tony for his first Pulitzer Prize winner (1967's A Delicate Balance) and starred in his third (1991's Three Tall Women). Maureen Anderman, from his second (1975's Seascape), came representing the 1976 revival of Virginia Woolf. The youngest Albee-ite in attendance was Kathleen Early, from 1997's The Play About the Baby. Continued...
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