American playwright Edward Albee’s award-winning 1962 drama is a no-holds-barred slugfest of insult, accusation and bitter recrimination as the booze flows and middle-aged George and Martha tear themselves, their miserable marriage and their unwitting guests to pieces.
Long ago, Martha (the daughter of a New England college president) married historian George in the hope that he would shine. Instead he’s turned into the browbeaten husk of a man whom she drunkenly, shamelessly berates in front of new arrivals – ambitious biologist Nick and his naïve wife Honey – who get drawn into their vitriolic emotional games after a faculty party. Beneath the practised cruelty of “Hump the Hostess” and “Get the Guests” lurks a longstanding hurt – and there’s more than a suggestion that the marriage of Luke Treadaway’s all-American Nick and Imogen Poots’ naïve Honey might just be heading the same way.
Conleth Hill (George) and Imelda Staunton (Martha) are faultless in James MacDonald’s gripping production – Hill, apparently all shambling resignation, sparks into sudden fury and, finally, the delivery of the killer blow; Staunton brash and embarrassingly determined to seduce – and undermine – the young academic (as much to humiliate her spouse as for sexual gratification), yet pitiably vulnerable, too. Put them together and the result is explosive and unmissable.
Harold Pinter, Panton Street, SW1Y 4DN
Tube: Piccadilly Circus
Until 27th May 2017
Tickets:-£15.00 – £65.00 + Premium Seats
