Edward-Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf-Albee’s 2002 play was, according to the man himself, an attempt to “test a few boundaries”, specifically those of sexual taboos in liberal society. Finally making its Scottish debut, this tale of intolerance is in the tradition of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, only instead of the ‘who’, it’s the dinner that’s coming to dinner.
A nigh-on perfect production of a healthily provocative and splutteringly funny script
Set in an affluent Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan, Martin (John Ramm) is a fifty year-old, Pritzker Prize-winning architect who has recently fallen in love with a goat. Upon confessing this to his friend Ross (Paul Birchard), Martin’s life is turned upside down when his wife Stevie (Sian Thomas) receives a letter from Ross spilling the beans. As Martin tries desperately to explain himself to his distraught wife and gay son Billy (Kyle McPhail), he finds that society just wasn’t built to accommodate this passion of his.
Director Dominic Hill has crafted a nigh-on perfect production of a healthily provocative and splutteringly funny script. Jonathan Fensom’s striking, luminescent set is pure Edward Hopper; like in those paintings, aesthetic banality suffocates the figures of isolation and loneliness within, who are played perfectly by all four actors, right down to the Park Avenue accents. As Martin discovers that there is in fact a lot that is human which is alien to people, the thin veneer of tolerance and sheer hypocracy of liberal society is exposed to him, leaving him sunk on the floor in anguish declaring “I’m all alone”. Ross is perfectly amused when he believes Martin’s affair is with a woman, regardless of what that would mean for Stevie. It’s simply that he can’t abide the affair being with a goat; the only reasoning he can muster for this is that it’s against the consensus. The problem with that, of course, is that at certain times and places throughout history it has been the consensus to gas Jews, burn women suspected of witchcraft and slaughter children who were born with a birthmark. Albee’s play is an attempt to see if there are any better reasons than this, and you may well leave the theatre feeling a lot less sure of your opinions than when you went in.