Review: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Roslyn Packer Theatre

Review by Kate Gaul

It’s been nearly two decades since Sydney last saw a professional production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Belvoir’s 2007 revival remains vivid in many memories -and I count myself lucky to have also seen Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin tear through Edward Albee’s verbal battleground on Broadway. So, it’s no small thing for a new staging to step into that charged lineage. Red Stitch’s production, directed by Sarah Goodes, proves that Albee’s masterwork never loses its intrigue, even when the execution doesn’t quite reach the fever pitch the text demands.

The production’s visual world is striking in its colour palette of teal and mustard which is echoed in the costumes. Harriet Oxley’s box set design renders the New England academic living room realistically. Matt Scott’s lighting complements this palette with cinematic sensitivity, sculpting the long night of drink and disintegration in measured gradations. Together, design and lighting give the impression of a heightened domestic world bathed in booze and regret, which was most appealing when both lean into the theatrical.

Goodes’ direction is assured and workmanlike, if not entirely inspired. She has a clear respect for the text’s rhythms and its inexorable descent into cruelty, but sometimes the pacing feels cautious, as if the production were afraid of the play’s own volatility. Virginia Woolf needs to swing wildly between intellectual sparring, erotic charge, and psychological annihilation; here, the tonal transitions are well-shaped but safe. There’s polish, but not always danger.

The leads (Kat Stewart and David Whitely) deliver reasonable performances, both technically capable and emotionally engaged, but they don’t quite achieve the corrosive chemistry that makes George and Martha’s relationship so exhilaratingly awful to watch. Without that dangerous spark, the game-playing risks feeling schematic rather than compulsive. Still, there are moments—particularly in the bitterly funny middle act—where the ensemble clicks, and Albee’s language hums with its full sardonic glory.

The standout, though, is Emily Goddard as Honey. In a role often reduced to comic relief, Goddard crafts a startling portrait of fragility and repression. Her Act II breakdown is extraordinary, shifting from tipsy giggles to abject self-exposure with breathtaking precision. She finds in Honey a kind of haunted innocence that becomes the evening’s emotional anchor. Her performance brings unexpected tenderness to a world otherwise fuelled by mockery and menace. Harvey Zielinski created and astute and ambitious Nick.

It’s in this middle act that the production truly catches fire. The quartet’s shifting alliances, the boozy confessions, the moments where laughter curdles into horror—Goodes orchestrates these with admirable clarity. For a while, the play feels alive again: raw, funny, and perilous.

Ultimately, this Virginia Woolf may not reach the brutal heights of its most celebrated predecessors, but it’s a thoughtful and handsomely rendered reading of a play that continues to expose the rot beneath the rituals of marriage and academia. Red Stitch’s version reminds us that Albee’s genius lies in how the words still cut - clean, cruel, and devastatingly human - even when the production that holds them plays it a little too safe.

Image Credit: Prudence Upton