Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
4 stars
Middle-aged married men are like dogs. Let them off the leash and chances are they’ll stray. This is a given of successful suburbanites the world over. In the human zoo of Edward Albee’s front room, however, it’s much worse. In Albee’s 2002 play it’s high-flying architect Martin’s fiftieth birthday and, while he may build cities, he’s about to declare a taste for the wildlife. Martin’s wife Stevie already smells a rat, and when his old stag of a college room-mate Ross spills the beans about where exactly Martin’s affections lie, gay son Billy gets gruff while a wounded Stevie roars with hurt and anger.
Albee’s increasingly extreme scenes from a marriage are a taboo-busting, liberal-baiting set of provocations that provide a typically vicious critique of an already subverted nuclear family. If this sounds bleak, think again. Because, as Dominic Hill’s production pushes Martin and Stevie’s hyper-articulate linguistic pedantry into increasingly self-reflexive exchanges, the absurdities of love, sex and marriage are laid bare in a ridiculous but still truthful psychological assault course.
As Sian Thomas’s Stevie machine-guns out an array of lacerating one-liners while John Ramm’s Martin deadpans his four-legged epiphany to anyone who’ll listen, this pan-generational battlefield of New York neuroses and oedipal tics resemble the sort of serious psycho-sexual fun Woody Allen used to have during his self-absorbed peak. More full-on than Allen, once Albee has all but smashed the conventions of domestic bliss, family affections spill out in all sorts of unexpected ways. While none of this is any more hardcore than your average Greek tragedy, to see it played out in such a respectably turned-out neighbourhood is a blast. No kidding.
The herald, April 23rd 2010
ends
4 stars
Middle-aged married men are like dogs. Let them off the leash and chances are they’ll stray. This is a given of successful suburbanites the world over. In the human zoo of Edward Albee’s front room, however, it’s much worse. In Albee’s 2002 play it’s high-flying architect Martin’s fiftieth birthday and, while he may build cities, he’s about to declare a taste for the wildlife. Martin’s wife Stevie already smells a rat, and when his old stag of a college room-mate Ross spills the beans about where exactly Martin’s affections lie, gay son Billy gets gruff while a wounded Stevie roars with hurt and anger.
Albee’s increasingly extreme scenes from a marriage are a taboo-busting, liberal-baiting set of provocations that provide a typically vicious critique of an already subverted nuclear family. If this sounds bleak, think again. Because, as Dominic Hill’s production pushes Martin and Stevie’s hyper-articulate linguistic pedantry into increasingly self-reflexive exchanges, the absurdities of love, sex and marriage are laid bare in a ridiculous but still truthful psychological assault course.
As Sian Thomas’s Stevie machine-guns out an array of lacerating one-liners while John Ramm’s Martin deadpans his four-legged epiphany to anyone who’ll listen, this pan-generational battlefield of New York neuroses and oedipal tics resemble the sort of serious psycho-sexual fun Woody Allen used to have during his self-absorbed peak. More full-on than Allen, once Albee has all but smashed the conventions of domestic bliss, family affections spill out in all sorts of unexpected ways. While none of this is any more hardcore than your average Greek tragedy, to see it played out in such a respectably turned-out neighbourhood is a blast. No kidding.
The herald, April 23rd 2010
ends
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