THEATRE. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at Vertigo

The theatrical season continues at the Vertigo in Via del Pallone 2. After the success of Alieni Nati, an original and innovative text, we move on to the great classic of world theater. The masterpiece by Edward Albee “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” will be performed on Saturday 26 at 9:00 pm and Sunday 27 at 5:00 pm, a bitter comedy that inspired American director Mike Nichols to create the cult film of the same title that consecrated the couple Liz Taylor and Richard Burton as Hollywood stars. The award-winning Compagnia degli Evasi di Sarzana, now a regular guest at the Vertigo, thanks to the previous successes of “Influencer,” “Senza Hitler,” and “La Locandiera,” returns with this particular adaptation: Three acts, originally presented this time without interruption as a single act, on a single tape that unfolds relentlessly in front of the audience’s eyes and hypnotizes them. A title that plays with the similarity between the children’s song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” and the author’s tribute to the writer Virginia Woolf, a true visionary who created a new way of storytelling and a new language, as well as a tireless fighter for women’s emancipation. In an alcohol-rich American night, the skeletons in the closets of the two protagonists, not particularly hidden, risk exploding a situation already worn out. She, Martha, is the daughter of the director of an important university and her husband, George, is a history teacher at the same university who finds himself subject to the violent malice of his wife, without ever being completely a victim, in a perverse game of massacre. In the middle of the night, a young married couple, friends of her father, arrives at this house – Nick, a young and ambitious biology professor, and his wife, Honey, a nondescript woman as Martha likes to call her. The two hosts spend an entire night exchanging barbs, trying to emotionally destroy each other, and the two guests will be both co-protagonists and spectators of this struggle that ends up becoming a play within the play. But for Martha and George, boredom is death, and therefore it must be fought with invention, fierceness, without pulling punches, reaching the thin line that separates psychological violence from real fear. A finale full of emotion will show us the other side of the two hosts, who deep down love each other and probably just fear living in reality.