Review: George and Martha return in Denver Center revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

A revival worth its salt should always bring fresh revelations, even when it’s set in a bygone era. In “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at the Denver Center, that discovery comes by way of the character George.  He, along with wife Martha, are if not the first couple of battling parlor dramas, one of the most titanic and influential ones.

Those of us indelibly marked by Mike Nichols’ and Edward Lehman’s 1966 film adaptation of Edward Albee’s domestic trauma drama (winner of the Tony for best play in 1963) may feel that Martha was the eye of that hurricane. Elizabeth Taylor portrayed the daughter of a New England college president married to George, a professor of history at the college. Taylor’s then-husband, Richard Burton, played George. He was very fine, but Taylor proved herself a fabulous harridan — shrieking, emoting and, yes, “braying” her way through a very late night of drinking and domestic sparring.

As this production’s Martha, Kelly McAndrew is delicious fun. But it is Jon Hudson Odom who commands the room — which might be an odd thing to say about a play that remains very much about masculinity and its fragility. While tempting to instead say “masculinity and emasculation,” this production with director Margo Bordelon at the helm refutes that misogynist read. George and Martha give as good as they get and the pair’s vicious, verbal pas de deux buoys and destroys them equally.

The play opens with Martha and George arriving home after a faculty party hosted by her father. It is late and they are tight and already needling each other. Martha famously asks George again and again in what movie did Bette Davis say, “What a dump!” Once the evening gets underway, a different Davis quote, from “All About Eve,” comes to mind: “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Stepping into the lion’s den to round out the play’s quartet are late-late-night guests biology professor Nick (Paul David Story) and his wife, Honey (Isabella De Souza Moore), who are young and new to the college. Sports reporters like to say nothing good comes of pro athletes being out after midnight. Same goes for this erudite bunch. Nick and Honey ring the bell a bit after 2:30 a.m.

Dawn can’t come fast enough, and yet Bordelon paces the three-hour play deftly. When things wind down, they do so with a deep melancholy and wounding truths.

Drink has made each of the gathered loose with secrets, with deliveries often cruel and snarky. Nick spills the beans about his and Honey’s courtship to George. Martha mentions to Honey that the following day will be her son’s 21st birthday. That there seems to be some confusion about George and Martha’s boy is Albee’s highwire act.

Virginia Woolf, the big bad pun spoofed in the play’s title and the subject of a ditty sung by Martha, didn’t have children. And progeny haunt the night. Do Nick and Honey plan on having kids? What of George and Martha’s son, who’s set to arrive the next day? And what of the lad in George’s unpublished novel?

Small talk hasn’t a chance here. Things get tense in a hurry. If Honey’s head is swimming, it’s not merely because the “slim-hipped” lightweight keeps asking for and drinking snifters of brandy. No, there’s a constant doubling down on the double entendres, by George and Martha to be sure, but also between George and his new colleague. Besides being a wunderkind, Nick was once a boxer, and the gloves never come off. An early scene finds the two men in the living room, George sitting cross-legged and Nick with legs splayed. Martha has been licking her chops at Nick, and his posture speaks a thousand words.

George goes at his blond, blue-eyed colleague on matters of genetics without ever saying the word “eugenics,” though it’s implied. At one point, thinking he can play with the big kids, Nick will ball up his fist. George may seem broken, but as inhabited by Odom, he isn’t. As for Honey, Moore does alternately touching and amusing work as the faculty wife who only gets drunker and more endearing (to us), an unprotected doe caught in oncoming headlights.