Chicago-style 'Virginia Woolf' cuts deep on Broadway

NEW YORK - In an unusual throwback to how Broadway operated when Edward Albee's booze-soaked George and Martha first prowled the boards in 1962, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company's naturalistic, emotionally intense, Chicago-style take on “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” opened here in one fell swoop Saturday night with critics, celebrities and Steppenwolf supporters all showing up together in the Booth Theatre for a Broadway transfer that came nearly two years after Pam MacKinnon's production originated in Chicago. The evening — chosen because it was 50 years to the day since the play's Broadway debut — concluded with the masterwork's 84-year-old author taking the stage with the original Steppenwolf cast: Amy Morton, Madison Dirks, Carrie Coon and, most notably, Tracy Letts, offering the performance that dominates this production and who, aptly enough, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, just like Albee.

Chris Jones

October 15, 2012