Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf @Sohoplace Review
Photo: Johan Persson
Total war?” “Total.” At two in the morning, following a faculty party hosted by Martha’s father, the university president, Martha invites the young professor Nick and his wife Honey back to her home to join her and her husband George for drinks. As the night wears on, alcohol and exhaustion gradually push their emotions and desires towards an explosive breaking point. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is one of the most important and best-known works by Edward Albee. This year, the play has once again arrived in London’s West End at Soho Place, directed by Marianne Elliott and led by Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup. More than sixty years after its first appearance, the energy contained within this play remains astonishingly powerful.
Walking into the theatre, the first thing that catches the eye is what looks almost like an arena, designed by Miriam Buether. Around the edges of the circular stage, surrounding the elegant furniture of Martha and George’s home, stands a vast ring of books. The brightly illuminated words “Fun and Games” are the most striking element in the darkness, while the titles of the other two acts, “Walpurgisnacht” and “The Exorcism”, rise into view one after another as the night progresses, as though announcing the beginning of successive rounds in a competition. Even the jazz piano playing before the performance feels like a light-hearted little tune before the game begins (Ian Dickinson).
Throughout the performance, the stage slowly rotates. At first, the movement is barely noticeable, but after a while, the audience may suddenly find themselves surprised by how much the positions of the furniture and the characters have changed without them quite realizing it. The movement mirrors the characters as they become increasingly entangled in the painful friction between them, while life continues to move relentlessly on.
The actors' nuanced performances bring a remarkable sense of authenticity to the story. Anderson’s Martha constantly scans George with a razor-sharp gaze. She moves with the grace of a leopard, elegant yet intensely predatory. As the night deepens, however, the abandon in her laughter gradually acquires a note of sadness, and she becomes increasingly childlike. Crudup’s George immediately gives me the impression as cultivated yet deeply frustrated. He seems to have already given up on himself to some extent, speaking with a wry mixture of irony and self-deprecation. When pushed to his limits, however, something more quietly sinister begins to emerge. He sometimes seems almost indifferent to Martha, yet he is constantly struggling against both Martha and himself. In truth, he cares about her far more than he is willing to admit.
Martha and George are both painfully intelligent people. Even after such a wildly destructive night, it is impossible not to see that George still deeply loves Martha, and that George is also the only person capable of making Martha happy. In an interview, director Elliott described them as “a couple who can’t live with one another or without one another,” and that is precisely what their performances convey.
Josh Dylan’s Nick is confident to the point of arrogance, ambitious and outwardly polished, yet far more fragile than George. There is something deeply unstable at his core, almost to the point of being easily shattered. Phoebe Horn’s Honey is gentle and uncomplicated. She may not be the sharpest of the four, but her absurd dancing to the classical music is both endearing and strangely sad, suggesting how much pain and confusion she has kept suppressed. By the time she finally leaves Martha and George’s home, her wariness towards Martha has faded, leaving behind something closer to concern and sympathy.
As glass after glass of alcohol disappears, the four characters visibly become slower and more dulled in their thinking, while at the same time acquiring a strange new force. I did, at times, find the performances lacking in explosive intensity, and there were moments when I longed for a deeper sense of devastation, the feeling of watching people give everything until there is nothing left. That said, I found much to admire in the restraint of their performances overall. Their conversations feel remarkably real. Though we have spent only these few early-morning hours in their company, we already feel as though we have come to know these four people intimately.
In the history of twentieth-century American culture, this play represents an important moment when theatre began to confront sex, marriage, family, failure and social taboos with greater directness. Watching the story again today, I am once again reminded that there is a reason certain works endure as classics. These four wounded people entertain themselves with one another’s pain, responding to their dissatisfaction with their own lives in increasingly desperate and destructive ways, as though there were no other way out.
Three hours of such sustained emotional intensity is difficult not to find exhausting, for both the actors and the audience. Yet almost everything that unfolds on stage during those hours is gripping and deeply affecting. What is reassuring is that, amid all the cruelty, there is still some warmth between them. As the sun is about to rise, George drapes his coat over Martha’s shoulders and tells her that perhaps everything will be better. She reaches out and touches his cheek. And when the play ends there, I find myself unexpectedly wanting more. I begin imagining what these two might look like afterwards, and what it might be like when these two couples meet again. The fact that the characters continue to live in my imagination after the curtain falls is perhaps enough to prove just how vividly alive this production feels.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf runs at Soho Place until 19th December 2026.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Written by Ziwen for Theatre and Tonic, September 2026.