Preview: A Searing Classic Returns with ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ at SCR

Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? offers one of the most formidable (and enduring) portraits of marriage ever written for any medium. But it’s rarely produced for the stage, at least in Southern California. South Coast Repertory (SCR), on the other hand, has the gravitas to give this intense and incisive live commentary on human relations a full-steam-ahead go, as the production has already begun with previews through Jan. 29th before the regular-performance run from Jan. 31 through March 21st.

First produced in 1962, Albee’s landmark play didn’t just scandalize audiences with its candor; it permanently altered the way American theater talked about intimacy, power, and the stories couples tell each other to survive. For many, the title is inseparable from the 1966 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, a ferocious, riveting piece of black-and-white cinema whose ebbs and flows of brutality remain startling even now. What that cinematic triumph captured — and what the stage version delivers with even greater immediacy — is the peculiar, often darkly funny spectacle of two people who know each other too well, and who wield that knowledge like a set of finely honed weapons. The exacting precision is almost uncomfortable to watch, but it’s impossible to turn away as you, the audience member, are held in its mesmerizing thrall.

At South Coast Repertory, Virginia Woolf is being presented as part of an ambitious rotating repertory alongside Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage (Jan. 23 – March 21). The two Tony Award-winning plays will alternate performances over the same stretch of weeks, sharing a single physical world and even two actors between the productions. These two pieces, despite being sprung from disparate eras, offer razor-sharp examinations of relationships through satire and emotional brinkmanship.

Directed by Lisa Rothe, SCR’s production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? stars Kim Martin-Cotten as Martha and Brian Vaughn as George, the long-married couple who invite a younger pair, Nick (Gabriel Gaston) and Honey (Elysia Roorbach), over for drinks that stretch deep into the night/morning. What begins as brittle, tipsy banter gradually hardens into something far more unsettling. Games turn into traps, jokes become confessions, and the living room transforms into a kind of battleground where no one escapes unscathed.

Albee’s genius lies in how he structures this descent. The play is often described as exhausting, but only because it’s designed to be: it runs approximately three hours and fifteen minutes, including two intermissions. But that length is part of its design. The audience isn’t meant to just sample this marriage but to urgently bear witness to it so the cumulative weight of every barb, retreat, and moment of vulnerability registers at the highest volume. The experience is less about sheer plot and more about endurance through calculated exposure.

In Martin-Cotten’s Martha, the role that cemented Elizabeth Taylor’s credibility as a serious actor, and in Vaughn’s George, two of the most demanding parts in the American canon will be invariably on display. Their relationship has curdled into a dance of cruelty and dependency, fueled by alcohol, disappointment, and a kind of desperate, corrosive love. Nick and Honey serve as both participants in the evening and, at times, as proxies for the audience — initially bewildered, then compromised, and finally forced to confront possible reflections and warnings.

For audiences accustomed to faster, lighter evenings at the theater, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? might not fit within their preferential scope at first glance but it is nonetheless a chance worth ultimately taking. Every theatergoer should occasionally put themselves in front of a subject matter that is perhaps challenging to see unfold, and by extension demandingly introspective, through a vicariously absorbed onstage journey that is as raw and complex as any human experience. More than sixty years after it first detonated on Broadway, Albee’s masterpiece remains a thrilling reminder of what theater can do when it dares to look unblinkingly at the private wars we fight behind closed doors.

Cover image caption: Left to right are Elysia Roorbach, Kim Martin-Cotten, and Brian Vaughn during rehearsal in South Coast Repertory’s 2026 production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Costa Mesa, CA. Photo is courtesy of Jon White/SCR.

South Coast Repertory’s production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? runs through Saturday, March 21st. For further information and to purchase tickets to the play, visit scr.org.