Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [Johan Persson]

SOHO Place’s in-the-round auditorium is the ideal setting for Edward Albee’s blistering play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, giving a vivid sense of a boxing ring for this warring couple. The audience is both onlooker and palpably immersed in their sniping.

Set on a 1960s university campus, Martha (Gillian Anderson) and her history professor husband George (Billy Crudup) arrive home drunk in the early hours. George is dismayed to learn that Martha has invited a new professor, Nick (Josh Dylan), and his dreary wife Honey (Phoebe Horn), for a nightcap.

Over the course of three acts (and three hours) we learn of the bitter disappointment the couple share. They trade recriminations and resentments about their life together and about Martha’s father, who is president of the college where George and Nick teach.

As the younger couple find themselves reluctantly drawn into the acrimony, and booze loosens tongues, their own vulnerabilities emerge, along with the suggestion that they might face a similar future.

Anderson and Crudup rise to the challenge of playing these iconic characters with panache, and their chemistry is magnetic, while Dylan and Horn are the perfect foil.

Anderson has more of a steely edge than Crudup, who is initially almost deferential – a moment with a gun doesn’t quite land as he doesn’t appear sufficiently wound up. But as dawn approaches his weariness turns into something more vicious.

It’s brilliantly staged by Marianne Elliott on Miriam Buether’s slowly revolving set, and though the drama feels a tad overlong, with just one interval and a five-minute pause for us to draw breath, the performances are unmissable.

Until December 19
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