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Who's Afraid?
26/4/07 07:52Last night Spouse, Sarcasm Girl and I went to see the touring production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, with Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin.
Wow.
It had been years since I'd read the play, and years since I last saw the film version with Burton and Taylor, which lives in my memory as a tour-de-force of uncensored viciousness. The Playbill notes that this production is based on revisions done in 2004, and without going line for line, I don't know whether that made a significant difference to the way the play works. But this production is much more nuanced. It's funny, a lot of it laugh-out-loud funny, and there is tenderness and kindness as well as bitterness and anger. It made more sense to me (though some of that may be a function of the fact that I'm, like, Martha's age now), and it's got a sort of slow heartbreak to it that eluded me the last time I saw it. Kathleen Turner is very good, but Bill Irwin is a revelation--his George is like watching a slave sabotaging, then attacking, his owner, but finally finding that he has tenderness for this person who has owned him, body and soul, for 23 years.
At first SG was afraid she wouldn't get it, since she hadn't read the play. In the event, she had no problem getting it, although she found the ending a little abrupt and confusing. "I have to think about this," she said blearily (this week is Star Test week, and she's running a little short on sleep). A totally reasonable response, I think.
Wow.
It had been years since I'd read the play, and years since I last saw the film version with Burton and Taylor, which lives in my memory as a tour-de-force of uncensored viciousness. The Playbill notes that this production is based on revisions done in 2004, and without going line for line, I don't know whether that made a significant difference to the way the play works. But this production is much more nuanced. It's funny, a lot of it laugh-out-loud funny, and there is tenderness and kindness as well as bitterness and anger. It made more sense to me (though some of that may be a function of the fact that I'm, like, Martha's age now), and it's got a sort of slow heartbreak to it that eluded me the last time I saw it. Kathleen Turner is very good, but Bill Irwin is a revelation--his George is like watching a slave sabotaging, then attacking, his owner, but finally finding that he has tenderness for this person who has owned him, body and soul, for 23 years.
At first SG was afraid she wouldn't get it, since she hadn't read the play. In the event, she had no problem getting it, although she found the ending a little abrupt and confusing. "I have to think about this," she said blearily (this week is Star Test week, and she's running a little short on sleep). A totally reasonable response, I think.