Be Afraid of This Virginia Woolf, a new play

Or: And a Porcupine in A Pair Tree

Both funny and horrifying to practitioners of the dramatic arts, Kevin Labrum’s one act comedy, Be Afraid of This Virginia Woolf gleefully bellyflops into the morass of a show gone wrong while reminding its viewers of all the theater ought to be. Celebrated, in his own mind at least, director Terry (Ben Hamil), who is not so much camp as an entire glamping experience, has summoned together a cast, perpetual ingenue Beth (Sheila Ann), Chase (Adrian Leon) whose “lips are chapped from ass kissing,” the prima-donna Samantha (Nova Calverley-Chase), and her ex husband, long suffering Malcom (Labrum himself) to put on a bright, happy, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

As Terry leads the cast through nebulous, pointless exercises, Mal who loves Albee’s play, goes from exhausted to simmering to explosive, reigned in only by Beth, his former protege. Labrum arid wit and weighted blanket sarcasm, hits a slew of comedic home runs, as he one-sixth heartedly joins in with his cast-mates antics (his reaction to his ex-wife exploring her character as a hyperactive cat is a mash of deadpan exasperation vs whole commitment to the bit, always a beautiful pairing.)

Though the play races breathless through its one act, popping off for various sidebars and emotional wrangling there are moments of honest connection amidst the characters, affairs real or imagined, precarious futures, dreams dimmed, that I wish could have been highlighted or continued to a second act. The laughs keep coming, and the advice to devotes of the theater ring true even amongst all the do not do this dissonance. There’s no room for smiles in Virginia Woolf but, as Malcom keeps reminding himself, “Find your light.”