Everyone’s Fine With Virginia Woolf, Theater Reviews

by Carol Rocamora

Elevator Repair Service, that devilish New-York-based company, is up to its tricks again – namely, hijacking existing written works and turning them into theatrical gold. Past source material has run the gamut from Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, to – of all things – a Supreme Court ruling.

This time, ERS’s literary heist is Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, Edward Albee’s 1962 masterpiece on the tragedy of marriage and childlessness. Albee’s play has unleashed the unbridled imagination of actress/playwright Kate Scelsa, one of ERS’s members, who has turned it into a hilarious parody, standing the play on its head and lampooning its male and female stereotypes. The result is Everyone’s Fine With Virginia Woolf, a wild and wonderful romp that will make your head spin (as well as your belly ache from laughing).

Scelsa’s wild parody is both an affectionate homage as well as a blazing assault on Albee’s classic, which features a middle-aged husband and wife in the mire of marital misery. You know the story (so no spoiler): George and Martha, an academic couple on an American college campus, get through one liquor-soaked night with their favorite self-destructive ritual – telling the story of their imaginary son. On this night, their audience is another unhappy, infertile couple named Nick and Honey.

Excerpt from “‘Everyone’s Fine With Virginia Woolf,’ Theater Reviews” by Carol Rocamora. Read the whole article here.