Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Bristol Old Vic

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is not generally known as a feel-good play. Yet it would be a shame if the play's desolate reputation should discourage audiences from making their way to the Old Vic. There is something wonderfully satisfying in seeing a grown-up modern classic performed with such thought, attention to detail, and a recognition that what lies beneath the surface of the script is far more interesting than a simple display of marital martial arts.

This is not a production which has the director's fingerprints all over it. With his scrupulous care for the minutiae, Gareth Machin is developing a niche for himself as a crafter of precision work in which the director's hand is almost invisible, yet absolutely crucial. This staging has not a theatrical hair out of place. Combined with a lyrical script which critic Harold Clurman summed up as being "not 'realistic' dialogue, but a highly literate and full-bodied distillation of common American speech.", what transpires on stage is almost too perfect. As a result, the audience are never quite drawn out of their role as observers and into the heart of this domestic armageddon. By thus avoiding the squirm factor that a more invitingly 'real' portrayal would induce, they have the chance to revel in the strength of the performances and the beauty of Albee's writing. Machin's production transfixes rather than discomfits, and is a more enjoyable night out as a result.

The delicate staging is aided by some intelligent interpretation of the main parts. George is often portrayed as a nebbish, an ineffectual cipher who lives up to Martha's description of him as 'a zero'. But not in Gerard Murphy's hands.. His George is a man who has chosen not to try, rather than one who has tried and failed. There is a strength in his embittered acceptance of a life more ordinary, and he tolerates his shrewish wife rather than being downtrodden by her. As a result, Clare Higgins' Martha - an attention-seeking hysteric with, it must be said, an accent which is a little too Queens for a New England college president's daughter - flutters like an irascible moth around the steady glow of George's quiet anger.

Rather than suggesting that this a couple who won't acknowledge that their marriage is a failure and a sham, their performances bring out the fact that so much of what passes between George and Martha is - as the title of the first act suggests - merely the 'Fun and Games' which so many married couples play (albeit on a grotesque scale). Higgins and Murphy both succeed in communicating not only the vitriol which floats on the surface of their marriage, but also the strange, twisted love that exists between them. This production suggests that buried deep inside Albee's play there may be a love story trying to get out. So maybe it is a feel-good play after all.

TOBY O'CONNOR MORSE

To 9 March. Box office (0117) 987 7877