Sparring with Albee is an insight into why this play has to be seen

Albee does not so much answer questions as engage in verbal sparring, then drop in sudden revelations almost casually. I was completely unprepared for this the first time I met him, and I ended up pinned to the canvas pretty quickly. The second time, I was mainly thrown by the rather frightening set of dentures Albee had just acquired. By the third occasion when I met Albee in his TriBeca apartment in New York I had learned how to feint, parry, and jab back at him. “I much enjoyed our interview,” he wrote to me later – and proved it by arranging to have it republished in a book of his own essays. I felt as if I had passed some kind of test.

There is a point to my name-dropping – it’s relevant to understanding why Albee’s celebrated Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has to be seen in a live theatre production to be properly appreciated. You might think you’re familiar with this play from reading the script, or from seeing the 1966 film version, but you really haven’t experienced it until you’ve been caught up in it, as I was in those interviews.

This is a play about dialogue, about performance – about an ageing university couple who invite another couple, newly arrived on campus, over for a nightcap that turns into an alcoholic nightmare.

For George and Martha, their guests Nick and Honey function as an audience in front of whom to “walk what’s left of our wits.” For the live audience in the theatre, the experience of watching this excruciating display is both hilarious and disorientating.

Your sympathies shift back and forth between the brawling husband and wife, and between the hosts and their hapless victims. One moment you’re laughing, the next moment you’re appalled at yourself for finding humour in someone else’s pain. The Crucible, in both name and layout, will be perfect for it.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Sheffield Crucible, to April 7. Stephen Bottoms is professor of drama and director of the Workshop Theatre at Leeds University. For an extended version of this article, log on to www.yorkshirepost.co.uk