Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf w/ Imelda Staunton

It's really hard to put screen acting in comparison to theater, it's literally two really different things, especially in this role.

Also, I met a woman at Glass Menagerie and she saw Uta Hagen doing this and for her, Taylor was all about scream, and while I disagree with her, I have to say that Imelda was a tour-de-force.

I saw this through NTLive too and wow, I was rather stunned into silence by the end!

I haven't read or seen the play or film before, so this was all new to me. I didn't know where it was going to go (except increasingly badly for all the characters!) and the deft intelligence, sparking humour and sharp points of the script were superb. The whole production was! This is a static one room play of the kind that can only succeed by pairing great writing with great acting, and the ensemble were terrific. In particular I was moved throughout by Conleth Hill. I felt I followed him most throughout the play, and he has such a seamless way of moving between humour and tragedy in a second. I loved George's development from defeat and passive aggression to a growing volatile anger of life still left in him yet.

Fab, couldn't fault it, wish I could see it again!

Can somebody please comment on the running time of the show (NTLive, including features)? Thanks!

I'm not saying that Imelda is a bad screen actress, simply that personally if I'd have seen the cinema broadcast only and not the play in person, I'd probably come away thinking she was a total ham. But, obviously, she isn't. Just pointing out the inherent problem with filming a play. If that makes sense.

No.

fortunately I don't care what you think. But thanks for your input. 

This makes such sense.
And this is why I have never been to a live screening.  I know I shouldn't criticise what I haven't tried, but I am very reticent to go to one.  Whilst some might say it's better than nothing if you can't get to see the performance live, I actually question if it is.  I would hate anyone to come away with an incorrect hammy impression of Imelda - or indeed any other actor.  (However, I know so many people go to these and enjoy them immensely and I wouldn't want to diminish their enjoyment.)
Wow - that's food for thought!  There are so many parallels - in particular the question that's been asked on here several times - why don't the guests just go home?  There's obviously something inherent in us to witness others' lives played out, however macabre they might be!  But I agree BB - they way Mick Leigh's stuff is devised it does seem likely that Virginia Woolf may have come up several times during the making of Abigail's Party.

Re Tibidabo's post above - I see a lot of theatre and opera that way and can honestly say that actors looking hammy or shouting isn't a problem. I can see how it might have seemed to have that effect in this production, but to be honest, for me it was pretty shouty in the theatre, too.

Review, from my blog:

It must be Edward Albee year around the Haymarket area of London, with both The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? and this play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, running in high profile revivals within a few yards of each other.

This is by far the better known of the two plays, perhaps due to the 1966 film featuring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor as George and Martha, and it is wearing its years well, with its cat and mouse domestic power games and the young guests trapped like rabbits in headlights, appalled but almost unable to get up and leave.

In this production Imelda Staunton plays Martha, a sarcastic, gin-swilling, braying, frustrated, pathetic shadow of the girl she must have been during the war years in which George courted her. Now she – as she admits in one revelatory moment – repels his kindness, attention and love with insults, clawing, and hatred.

Conleth Hill is absolutely superb as George, who has been squashed and silenced for so long that the bitterness has grown and simmered under a sad surface. He’s a man who perhaps once had ambition to lead and rule, but the years have got to him. Six years younger than Martha, he looks fifteen years older, with a careworn air and a resignation to the life fate has dealt him.

Into their gameplay come a young biologist who has recently joined the college, a blond muscleman who has a clear career trajectory and a healthy dose of contempt for those around him, and his mousy wife who drinks to mask her unhappiness at being unable to conceive or cope with the social demands of her world. Luke Treadaway plays the young blade Nick who is played to perfection by the older couple as they have done so many times before; while Imogen Poots is tragically wan as his constantly upchucking wife, Honey, who has a love for brandy which might yet turn her into a Martha.

This is a wordy play, but one in which each word has weight and meaning, and the full effect is one of an emotional rollercoaster by the end of act three. Starting as something of a black comedy, there are laughs to be found through the earlier scenes (trying to identify a Bette Davis movie) which quickly turn into something much more uncomfortable with the arrival of the guests and the games people play. There was mainly pin-drop silence in the final scenes, which were beautifully done.

This is a sensational revival full of screams, shouts, spittle, smoking, sadness and occasional silence. James Macdonald directs with a sense of space and occasion, with the one living room set and a number of off-set locations (upstairs, the downstairs cloakroom, the kitchen). The language has perhaps been a little ripened since the original (the opening salvo to the young couple of ‘screw you’ has become rather stronger) but the meat of the piece is there.

I saw this from the front row so every nuance of gesture, reaction, or interaction was captured, giving the feeling that we were almost additional trapped guests ourselves. As an honest depiction of two marriages this play gives us much food for thought, conjuring up images of the youthful George and Martha before life and circumstance trapped them, and a vision into the future to what awaits Nick and Honey.

I miss all the rush seats LOL. I paid full price but it was definitely worth it.

You'd have been much more use than me last night BurlyBeaR when the man next to me turned and asked me that question and i had to admit to not having seen it.

Am going to have to go back through the board and read everything and post proper thoughts later but this was great. Badly behaved audience, lots of knocking over drinks, odd laughs, people being very slow on turning off their glowing phones or having a bit of a chat. On stage brilliant and great end of row c seat thanks to theatremonkey? board tip off, all those months ago.

His line of argument sounded plausible to my admittedly complete ignorance, I said i would check it out and give it some thought.