Type – 20th Century America, Absurdist tragicomedy
If you liked – The American Dream, Oh Dad, Poor Dad, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: An exorcism of marriage is told through an exploration of love so deep that it devastates
First performed in 1962, the reception of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was met with shock and controversy, not only for its female character portrayal, but for its unflinching dissection of the 1950s post-war American Dream. It depicts a fractured marriage filled with impotence and infidelity that rips apart the façade and illusions of the ‘happy family’ trope, presenting a dysfunctional couple that did not fit the 1960s ideal picture of a successful man with a supportive wife and happy children. After sell-out seasons in Melbourne, this Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre production has arrived in Sydney as STC present Edward Albee’s American classic to finish their 2025 season with a bang.
The work opens with Martha (Kat Stewart) and George (David Whiteley) drunkenly clamouring across the theatre’s upper balcony, before bursting through the auditorium doors and up to the stage. It’s 2AM and they’re returning from a work party for the University where George works and Martha’s father sits as its president. Cackling and tripping over her own feet, we quickly learn that Martha’s a mean drunk who doesn’t hold back, and George handles her brittle, sharp edges with brutal, sarcastic undermining and plenty of booze. Shortly after arriving home, a younger couple knock at the door – guests Martha met earlier in the night and forgot to tell George that she’d invited over. What unfolds is three hours of high-octane, scathing and unpredictable vomit and interpretative dance-filled antics.
The Red Stitch Production
Sarah Goodes’ direction leans heavily into the comedy with brisk pacing that heightens the black humour of Albee’s writing style. Coming in at over three hours long, the marathon text does need to maintain the pressure cooker tempo to embody the anguish that drives the drama, however this staging does so at the cost of clarity. I think though, perhaps that’s exactly the point. Goodes’ production definitely exemplifies Albee’s vision of creating a world that lacks cohesion, blurs the line between reality and illusion, and allows a disconnect from reality for both the audience and the characters.
Grace Ferguson and Ethan Hunter‘s composition and sound design strengthen the jarring undertones of the text combining 60s backing tracks from the record player with intensifying and chilling soundscapes, while Matt Scott‘s lighting design reinforces the homely feel with light sources from within the home as well the stage lighting.
Harriet Oxley’s set design frames the walls of the 1960s living room with a thick velvet border – like the photo frames you see at a grandparents’ house. The walls are patterned with busy green wallpaper, and a faded crushed-velvet upholstered lounge sits amongst the period wooden furniture with dusty books piled up on the floor around a well-stocked bar. The set remains unchanged throughout as the whole plot unfolds over one evening in the home. Originally created for Red Stitch’s 80-seater theatre, the set was adapted for the larger space of Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre and now Roslyn Packer Theatre and maintains the claustrophobic feel despite the upsize.
Who can be afraid of these performances?
Daid Whiteley presents a subtle, repressed, and lonely George, epitomising the dull lover of ‘intellectual jokes’ with a superiority-complex type that’s equally balanced with a deceptive sense of emasculation and meekness that leaves you feeling winded in his finale. Masterfully straddling manipulative and passive aggressive with pedantic and tortured, the portrayal clashes jarringly opposite his real-life wife. Kat Stewart‘s severe and rhythmic, intensely physical embodiment is a driving force in her high-wattage and diabolical characterisation of Martha. Volatile and magnetic, she brings a messily human and brutally honest vulnerability to this unlikeable yet relatable and wounded woman.
Spectators to the shouting match dumpster-fire of a marital display from George and Martha, the supporting couple Nick and Honey also unravel in front of our eyes as their observations turn to reflections that maybe they’re hurdling down the same path. As Nick, Harvey Zielinski settles into the rhythmic cadence of Albee’s writing; with firmly grounded pacing, he holds the audience in painfully long moments of deep discomfort and dread. His characterisation clearly displays being torn between wanting to impress his boss’ daughter and not upturn his own life in the process. Emily Goddard brings ditsy and damaged to her portrayal of Honey, consistently reinforcing the unhinged (from always being treated as second rate) feminine undercurrent in her every appearance. While feeling slightly caricature-like at times, she gets the biggest laughs and even a mid-scene round of applause on opening night for her hilariously entertaining and manic interpretative dance.
Is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Worth Seeing in Sydney?
A work about how destructive and isolating the desperation to maintain the façade of the perfect life can be, this production delivers disorientating, high intensity humour and thought provoking theatre that challenges you to reflect on your own relationships and how different things really are in today’s society – even 60 years on from the text’s inception.
In an interview I was lucky enough to have with Stewart, she says: “It’s not quite naturalism, it’s quite surreal in parts, it’s heightened in parts, it’s just endlessly challenging and fascinating, a real privilege to work on something like this.”
Tickets and Practical Info for WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF in SYDNEY 🎟️
Playing at Sydney Theatre Company’s Roslyn Packer Theatre until December 14 2025
Tickets: $35-$171
Sydney Theatre Company presents a Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre production in association with GWB Entertainment and Andrew Henry.
Director Sarah Goodes
Designer Harriet Oxley
Lighting Designer Matt Scott
Composition and Sound Design Grace Ferguson and Ethan Hunter
Video Designer Charlie D
Resident Director Kenneth Moraleda
Intimacy Coordinator (Original Season) Amy Cater
With
Emily Goddard
Kat Stewart
David Whiteley
Harvey Zielinski
Gareth Reeves
Kate Skinner
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