Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – Review of 2025 Canadian Stage Production

Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? received considerable publicity before it opened in the Canadian Stage production at the Blima Appel Theatre in Toronto. I saw it late in its scheduled performances and hence my belated review. It is a noteworthy production of a great play.
Brandin Healy, the Artistic Director of Canadian Stage directs the production and it features Martha Burns as Martha, Paul Gross as George, Mac Fyfe as Nick and Hailey Gillis as Honey.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Is about two couples who get together after a faculty cocktail party in a northeastern American university. The host couple, Martha and George have a complicated relationship and both are offensive, acerbic, vicious and cruel to each other and later to their guests. They have illusions and delusions, hatred, and bitterness in astounding degrees.
Honey and Nick, the hapless couple that were invited by George and Marth for a drink at two in the morning, have issues of their own like a phantom pregnancy, marriage of convenience for Nick and the slings and arrows of perhaps ill-matched people.
Albee divides his 3-act 1961-62 play into Fun and Games, Walpurgisnacht and The Exorcism to give us some idea of the range of the play and the relationship of the four characters.
Martha is the dean’s daughter and considers George, a professor of history, beneath her, a failure and a man deserving of contempt. She delivers all with power anger, hatred, and viciousness. She wants people to know that they have a son whose birthday is the next day and it is his 21st. Everything about the son becomes nebulous and suspicious and the title of the play, sung with the words Virginia Woolf repeated like a refrain proves tantalizing. Martha Burns delivers a stunning performance.
George is a pathetic failure as a husband, an academic and human being but he knows more than he reveals. He tries to protect Martha while receiving insults about his academic failures and his human shortcomings. He strikes back at Martha and tries to protect himself from her viciousness and protect Martha who is not playing by the rules that apply to the couple’s relationship. With his mop of white hair, George is well past his prime and he plays defense only for so long and is forced to strike back.
Nick is a new faculty member and teaches biology. He represents the new world in contrast to George’s subject of looking at the past. He is athletic and no fool but he did marry Honey for her money or so it seems. He is driven to abstraction by the whole situation and takes the opportunity to strike back by having sex with Martha.
Honey is pathetic as the daughter of a wealthy man who marries the athletic Nick who is attracted more to her father’s wealth than to her. She gets drunk easily and hopes to have a child. She is sickly and pathetic but does the right thing by falling asleep so her husband can have sex with Martha.
Set Designer Julie Fox uses the large Bluma Appel Theatre stage for George and Martha’s apartment. It revolves so we can see the back and the front of the furniture and it does the job.
Brendon Healy keeps the emotional levels under tight control and we see every nuance as the couples tear each other apart as they get progressively more inebriated.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee continues until February 18, 2025, at the Bluma Appel Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, 27 Front Street East, Toronto, Ontario.     www.canadianstage.com

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Paul Gross, Martha Burns, Hailey Gillis and Rylan Wilkie in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”  
Photo: Dahlia Katz/Canadian Stage

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