Response to Brantley's Review on 'Virginia Woolf'

This is a response to a theatre review by Ben Brantley
'Marriage as Blood Sport: A No-Win Game'
March 21, 2005
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/03/21/theater/reviews/21wool.html


He got it right: most Americans would agree that marriage is a blood-sport where everyone ultimately loses. In his review, Ben Brantley gives a congratulatory applause to Anthony Page’s production of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ by saying that this ‘welcome surprise’ will make the audience leaving the theater ‘feeling like winners.’ Brantley gives a detailed analysis of the actors and their interpretation of the characters in the play, however, for readers with no previous experiences with Uta Hagen, Arthur Hill, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, or the play itself for that matter are left clueless by the comment like ‘there probably has never been a "Virginia Woolf" in which the leading roles initially register as such elemental contrasts.”

Brantley continues commending the success of the production by commenting on Director Page’s interpretation by which he tempered the original play's notorious vitriol with eye-opening compassion. According to Brantley, the actors - under Page and through their exceptional acting - restore characters who have acquired the faces of Freudian monsters to purely.

His review seems to be geared toward the older – perhaps middle aged – metropolitan theatergoer couples who had already been there, done that (marriage that is!) However, his raving claim about the ‘satisfaction that comes from witnessing one helluva fight’ is enough to draw in younger audience as well.