Lacks bite...

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, Lyceum Theatre, Oldham

EDWARD Albee’s drama is a work that often sends professional companies running for the Big Book of Easier Plays, so an amateur production might be thought pretty foolhardy.

But the Lyceum Players has never been a group to shy away from risk, accepting a thin audience as a consequence.

Albee’s prize-winning examination of ritual humiliation and what amounts to the first dramatic example of Stockholm Syndrome — you hate the characters but can’t look away — is not easy to watch.

Both fascinating and deathly, it comes from that line of early Sixties US drama that delved histrionically into the emotions of its characters, only sometimes successfully; mostly abandoning plot in the process.

Albee puts four characters in a room and lets them play — literally, in the case of party-hosts George (Ean Burgon) and Martha (Maggie Blaszczok).

The situation is unlikely: it’s 2am, and college newcomers, young biology professor Nick (Stephen Nathaniel) and his fragile wife Honey (Rebecca Rosenthal), are post-party guests of history professor George and his blowsy, alcoholic wife Martha, the college president’s daughter.

Who goes to a post-party party with strangers at 2am, and when the sparks start to fly, who stays? These two do, and simply because Albee wants them to.

The play is about illusions, both within and for others, and as in Macbeth or Don Giovanni, reality is secondary.

George and Martha play cruel games on each other and on their guests — games that in normal life would result in punches being thrown. But Albee’s mix of cruelty and black humour is compelling — like watching a train wreck — when done properly.

And that’s the problem here: these people — illusions apart — have got to be real: Martha a vulgar bitch; George a smiling sadist; Nick both intrigued and disgusted by his hosts and Honey another Martha in the making.

In Pauline Walsh’s production I rarely got the sense that any of the quartet truly believed what they were saying or what Albee was up to

A commendable risk, but this time not totally successful.