Head turner

It’s been 44 years since Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? made its debut on Broadway, but it still seems extraordinarily fresh. Why? The obvious answer is that the subject matter — the battle of the sexes — is timeless. Anyone in a heterosexual relationship will experience a shudder of recognition at certain points during a performance of this play, if not all the way through. But I don’t think that’s the reason. Rather, it’s because Albee’s ear for dialogue is so good. His ability to capture the rhythms and cadences of the way people speak is uncanny.

Paradoxically, even though Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is set in the Eisenhower era, the characters sound so lifelike that they seem more like people we know than the characters in most contemporary plays. Unless, of course, they’re contemporary plays by Edward Albee. This production, which arrives in the West End via Broadway, has been garlanded with awards — and it’s not hard to see why.