Albee’s ‘Woolf’ Comes to Ford’s at Last

Paul Tetreault, artistic director of Ford’s Theatre since 2004, was pumped.

The opening at Ford’s of a new production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” was only a week away. Tetreault and rising-star director Aaron Posner were talking about playwright Edward Albee, his daunting classic and the challenges and joys of mounting it at the historic theater.

If Ford’s Theatre, with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at its core, is an American theater steeped in its own history, Albee’s frighteningly funny and shockingly dramatic play occupies a critical place in American theater history.

For Tetreault, the production is a project long dreamed of. Become coming to Ford’s, he had been managing director of Houston’s Alley Theatre for more than 100 productions, including several of works by Albee, with whom he had forged a friendship. 

The tourist-, family- and tradition-friendly Ford’s Theatre, which had been presided over by the late Frankie Hewitt, wasn’t known as a cradle of edgy material. At the time Tetreault arrived, we offered that he might not be doing “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” anytime soon, and he agreed. But even then you could tell he was thinking: not soon, but someday.

Someday has arrived — a convergence of art and artists and the growth of the Washington theater community and of Tetreault himself.

During his tenure at Ford’s, Tetreault has mounted productions of enduring quality and heart, inquisitiveness and boundary stretching. He has brought a spirit of collaboration with local groups and artists to the theater. The results have included a terrific, ground-up co-production with Signature Theatre and its artistic director Eric Schaeffer of a musical version of Frank Capra’s “Meet John Doe,” a stirring production of “Big River” from the National Theatre of the Deaf and several outstanding Lincoln-theme plays (“The Heavens Are Hung in Black,” “The Widow Lincoln”) during the 150th anniversary commemoration of the assassination.

Tetreault was also one of the D.C. theater leaders instrumental in putting together the Women’s Voices Theater Festival in 2015, in which just about all the local theaters opened their seasons with new plays by female playwrights.

This production comes less than a year after the death of Albee, who passed away at age 88 last September, having lived a life as productive as it was long. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” was his breakthrough play, hitting Broadway like a bomb in 1962. In “Woolf,” the acerbic, caustic, deeply troubled and dangerous George and Martha — he is a professor, she is the daughter of the university’s president — invite an ambitious young professor named Nick and his nervous wife Honey over for drinks, games, revelations and truth-telling. It’s a social gathering as mortal combat. 

“It moves from comedy to drama and finally tragedy,” Tetreault said. It’s also a three-act (“Fun and Games,” “Walpurgisnacht” and “The Exorcism”) exploration and exposure of the undercurrents in American culture and society circa the early 1960s.

When it opened — starring Arthur Hill and Uta Hagen as George and Martha — it got the kind of reviews and attendance that meant gold. While there have been many revivals, most people know the play from the Mike Nichols-directed movie version of 1966 starring Elizabeth Taylor (who won her second Oscar), Richard Burton, George Segal and Sandy Dennis.

This will mark the first production of “Woolf” at Ford’s as well as the first production there of an Albee play. That also goes for Posner, who has directed or adapted or revised more than 100 plays in his time, many of them in the D.C. area. “Never, this is my first time, ever,” he said. “And, sure, there’s a sense of responsibility here. It’s a challenge and everybody that’s done it brings some sort of sense of their own vision to it. Every play is about the storytelling. It’s unflinching, it’s difficult. He holds your feet to the fire.

“He’s hard. Lots of people have mixed emotions about him,” Posner continued. “No one doubts his genius, but there’s people that can’t stand him. I had a great deal of admiration for him, but I hadn’t learned to love him. Until now.”

Posner has built a reputation adapting classics and making them feel and sound contemporary. Chekhov’s “The Seagull” became “Stupid F—ing Bird” at Woolly Mammoth, Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” became “District Merchants” at the Folger.
The lineup for this production is: the incomparable Holly Twyford as Martha (Posner and Twyford have worked together many times), Gregory Linington as George, Danny Gavigan as Nick and Maggie Wilder as Honey.

“Holly is one of our greatest treasures in Washington,” Tetreault said. “We’ve been talking about this for a while. And then I saw her in a production of “Sex With Strangers” directed by Aaron, and it came together. We needed him on this.”

We asked Tetreault if this was a risky proposition. “Every play is risky,” he said. “But this is an American classic. You have to do that. It’s not just about box office.

“It’s funny. One thing you never asked him,” he said, speaking of Albee, “is what his plays were about. He doesn’t answer all the questions.”