(Left to right) Holly Twyford, Danny Gavigan, Maggie Wilder, and GregoryLinington. (Scott Suchman)

By DCist contributor Allie Goldstein

Asked if there were any taboos left in theater, Edward Albee once told the New York Times, “Yes, I don’t think you should be allowed to bore an intelligent, responsive, sober audience.”

The boxing match of a script that is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is anything but boring, and Ford’s Theatre’s production of the 1962 play, directed by Aaaron Posner, is especially punchy.

Albee, who died in September, said he wanted to be remembered as a “useful playwright,” and the play’s themes—of storytelling as ammunition, of the tenuous distinction between reality and fiction, of history versus science—take on new meaning in modern times.

The premise is simple: Martha (Holly Twyford), the darling daughter of the president of the college where her husband George (Gregory Linington) is an associate professor, invites the new-in-town Nick (Danny Gavigan) and Honey (Maggie Wilder) over for a nightcap. But despite the small-town New England setting, this is no Puritan meet-and-greet. George and Martha ask their guests how much they weigh, flirt shamelessly, and suggest playing “musical beds.”

Though George and Martha are at each other’s throats even before their guests arrive, the younger couple only accelerates their debauchery and insidious storytelling. “Rubbing alcohol for you?” George smiles at his wife. The digs only get crueler as the couple, married for 23 years, invent elaborate ways to undermine each other.

Twyford’s Martha does indeed “bray” and, like Elizabeth Taylor in the 1968 film version, oscillates effortlessly between the positions of sadist and victim. Unlike the tightly cropped shots of the film, Posner has a relentlessly wide view to work with: the set does not change in the play’s three-hour runtime. He uses the space well, placing physical gulfs between the characters to highlight their emotional stand-offs. When they do come together—whether it’s Martha snaking a sly hand between Nick’s thighs or George lunging at Martha’s neck—it’s all the more explosive.

Linington’s George starts out subdued in his dumpy tan sweater, but he quickly proves to be Martha’s match, a current of furious electricity running beneath his calm voice. Gavigan and Wilder turn in strong supporting performances, bringing a smug likability to Nick and a deer-in-the-headlights quality to Honey as she tries to giggle away the evening’s mounting absurdity. There is nowhere to hide within a cast of four, and these actors are magnetic, as enthralling as they are repulsive.

Virginia Woolf is so jam-packed with hilarity and devastation that it’s a bit incredulous that it all goes down in the space of a living room. Meghan Raham’s set design grounds us in the quotidian: a cross-section of George and Martha’s house appears like a shoe-box panorama, the insulation visible at the seams.

Still, much of the action takes place elsewhere, in the settings of the characters’ stories. The real power struggle of the play is in controlling the narratives of their own lives. “Truth or illusion, who knows the difference?” George asks.

It’s a question these characters take seriously. They stake their marriages in the vast gray area. As Albee knew, that’s where we live, too.

Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf? is at Ford’s Theatre through February 19. Buy tickets here.