Half-Hearted

Another American classic, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (which includes several quotes from "Streetcar Named Desire"), is a half-hearted affair, a quintessential bickering couple drama lacking strong enough casting in the male half to pull off the caustic back-and-forth needed to make the tour-de-foce worthwhile.

Kathleen Turner is a good choice for Martha, the brutally delusional hen who feeds on failure (and gin). Like Streetcar, we have a great cinematic version to compare all productions (unfair, but true); Turner is up to the pace set by Elizabeth Turner and manages to be both frumpy and smarmy, strong and shallow.

But Bill Irwin's George, the picked-on loser, erudite, and milquetoast, simply can't  put over a character with a similar facade of bravado. Irwin, as we know, is a gifted clown -- his performance has interesting postural affectations -- but simply can't stand up to Turner's Martha. You could say that as a clown, he lacks the acting chops, but I'd just say that he can't tell a joke; too many of his monologues, which should end with withering punchlines, simply fall flat on the stage. And then compared (again unfortunately) with Richard Burton's performance...well, just rent the film.

In other news, though I seem to have put my copy of the stage play in storage, I'm pretty sure that the play has been padded quite a bit for this production. Any confirmation from other reviews??

Update: Bill Irwin won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. I still stand by my comments that his performance was soulless and robbed the production of much needed acidity. However, Congrats.