WESTBROOK — It can be risky to go to a party held right after a party. Things can sometimes get a little too loose and crazy. Inhibitions can crumble.
Young couple Nick and Honey may have made the mother of all bad decisions by accepting an invitation to head over to George and Martha’s house after a faculty party ended. They jumped onto a rough ride in the wee hours of the morning.
It’s no rock concert, but your ears may nonetheless ring a little after seeing this take on “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” But see it you should.
Acorn Productions is presenting the classic 1962 Edward Albee play at the intimate, 40-seat theater space they inhabit in an old Westbrook mill building. Directed by Michael Levine, “Who’s Afraid” stars Paul Haley as George, an aging professor of history at a small New England college, and Kerry Rasor as his wife, Martha, who is the daughter of the college president.
George and Martha have been at each other for years. About failed ambitions, dashed hopes, compromised principles, domestic disappointments, they jab and zing one another with deadly wit and malice (interspersed with unexpected touches of affection).
Haley and Rasor, as seen at Friday’s opening performance, do an excellent job at getting at how the couple has become comfortable with, in fact making a sort of game out of, their unhappiness.
“You can stand it,” Rasor’s Martha shouts, “you married me for it!!”
When the young couple, played by Nicholas Schroeder and April Singley, arrive, George and Martha quickly size them up. Nick wants to possibly use a connection to the president’s daughter to further his career. And airhead Honey’s “slim hips” suggest she’s something other than Nick’s true love.
Singley charged up a number of scenes with her Honey’s oblivious, off-key excitability. Schroeder realized his Nick gradually and had his best moments later on in the play.
Haley’s George is the one most likely to be remembered from this production, though. It’s a fine performance as a classic character who, though a drunk and a failure in many ways, turns out to be the only adult in the room.
Steve Feeney is a freelance writer who lives in Portland.
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