Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? review – Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup toe-to-toe in the West End

What a play! Written in 1962, Edward Albee’s marital drama Who’s  Afraid of Virginia Woolf? sizzles with energy and power.

In a production as good as this one, starring Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup as Martha and George, the couple whose drunken sparrings stretch over a long night’s journey into day, pulling their house guests, ambitious academic Nick (Josh Dylan) and his frail wife Honey (Phoebe Horn), into their emotional maelstrom, it has the capacity to hold an audience spellbound.

Laughter dries in the throat, tears rise, as the brilliance of Albee’s writing and the conviction of the performances bring this mighty three-hour drama through storms into safe harbour. It’s a wonderful thing.

Marianne Elliott’s direction is full of sensitive, thoughtful touches. From the very start, she makes it clear that this marriage between George, who is bogged down in the history department of a New England college where Martha’s father is the president, is not a dead thing. There’s a spark between them. Anderson’s Martha may jeer and bray at him, but Crudup’s shambling George can make her laugh, and she genuinely wants him to kiss her as the guests arrive.

It’s clever too to make a circle of light above Miriam Buether’s revolving living room that announces the names of the three acts: ‘Fun and Games’, ‘Walpurgisnacht’, and ‘The Exorcism’. The naming charts the cast-iron structure of the piece, the way the games – “Humiliate the Host”, “Get the Guests”, “Hump the Hostess” – progress the emotional trajectory to its cathartic conclusion.

In this cockpit-like setting, Anderson’s Martha is a supreme being, conscious both of her own attraction and her own despair. Chin jutting, eyes blazing, it’s a raucous, charismatic performance, full of sharp insight, conveying the great arcs of Martha’s feelings in tight detail. Every fibre of her body is expressive and she notes unusual moments; I’ve never seen so clearly before that it is not George’s novel about his unusual past that embarrassed her, but his failure to be bold enough to publish it. As the night progresses, her growing desolation, her genuine terror at being forced to give up her dream, is deeply moving.

Against this vivid performance, Crudup makes a greyer, gentler foil. He may be mild, but he knows “when I am threatened” and his George gives as good as he gets, both in defence of his own self-worth but also for humanity, and individuality in the great march of conformity that is threatening them both. His performance is naturalistic and wry; he delivers the poetic speeches that define his character almost as asides. His glee when his barbs hit the mark – when he discovers Nick really did marry Honey for her money – his entire face lightens, adding a layer of playfulness to the games he initiates.

But the lightness doesn’t lessen the impact. This is, in general, an unusually funny production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but it never loses sight of the larger themes underpinning the drama: the need to distinguish between truth and illusion, to know oneself, to accept reality even when it hurts.

This is reflected too in the way that Nick and Honey emerge from the evening changed by what they have experienced. Dylan’s Nick is unusually unpleasant, barely bothering to hide his contempt beneath politeness. He never listens even as George attempts to warn him; but in the final scenes, when truths are really revealed, he is paying attention and it shifts his relationship with Horn’s tender, lost Honey beautifully.

There’s something magnificent about seeing one of the great American plays so clearly realised and rethought. There are no gimmicks here, just clarity and respect. It is a great night at the theatre.