A Fine Sense of the Ridiculous

The WholeArt theatre of Kalamazoo opened Thursday night with Edward Albee’s now classic play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Ambitious, given that the play demands from its actors a level of psychic engagement that could only lead to a state of exhaustion.

And this was the case for most of cast as indicated by Richard Philpot’s (George) occasional stammering and line confusion. But, Albee’s play has plenty of room for these occurrences; in fact, it necessitates that the actor, in all of his or her idiosyncrasies, occupy the vacant spot to embody the language. This after all is Albee’s point.

The set on Thursday night was both intimate and accessible. It was a large square, outfitted in the furnishings of 50s era east coast socialites: jazz records, the Kinsey report, ashtrays, and plenty of the finest booze. Four bleachers crowded the small space where the action took place. The audience almost sat on top of the actors, clouding the distinction between illusion and reality so essential to the play. It also evoked a kind of voyeurism. At times the Philpot’s seemed to get-off in the heavy gaze of the audience, as they unloaded on one another as the disillusioned Martha and George.

Perhaps the only thing out of place was the empty bottle of Popov that Mr. Philpot hurls at the bookshelves in the culmination of scene one. No socialite would touch that shit!

Edward Albee came across the phrase “Who’s afraid of Virigina Woolf?” in a bar restroom. It was written with soap on the mirror. For Albee, it was an intellectual’s joke; the kind of quip that socialites lay awake at night trying desperately to come up with, so as to arouse a haughty laugh at the next dinner party. It was not only the perfect frame for the erudite characters of his play; it held a greater significance: It pointed to the fundamental antagonism of human existence.
Albee embeds this antagonism in the boundaries of our definitions. In a barely veiled allusion to Epimenides’ “Liar’s Paradox”, Nick (Trevor Maher, K Alum), the young and fit genetic engineer, ignorantly shouts, “That of course would make us Cretans!” I speak, I lie: Deal with it! – Albee definitely says to his bewildered audience.
Nothing in our collective understanding remains unchallenged. George and Martha interrogate each and every taken for granted linguistic tic in their twisted search for truth.

While such attitudes can most certainly lead (and they most certainly do) to the cruel and manipulative ploys that the characters develop in a kind of ‘survival of the shrewdest’; there, nevertheless, remains a sense of hope. When the two men are deep in a moment of sparring, Nick desperately yells, “Tell you why? To make contact? To communicate?”
It is in these moments of betrayal: when what you meant to say and how you expected someone else to hear it, is twisted and contorted in such a way that you can neither recognize yourself or the other. This is a moment when it is apparent that beneath the humiliation and selfishness of the most vile of encounters, there persists the desire to authentically connect.