THEATER : Fine ‘Woolf’ in Cheap Clothing

Was it really three decades ago? It seems only yesterday that Edward Albee burst onto the Broadway scene with his first major full-length play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

The illusion of lost time may have more to do with disappointment than with tricks of memory. Albee has written many plays since that corrosive living room epic of marital discord, but none comes close to its visceral power or mordant humor.

The composer Ned Rorem--an indefatigable diarist who keeps a sharp eye on culture for us all--once wrote of American playwrights: “Big and little, (they) fall without repeal into that pigeonhole of the prematurely sterile.” He was talking specifically of Albee and Arthur Miller, William Inge and Lillian Hellman, Arthur Laurents and Maxwell Anderson. Tennessee Williams was “no exception.”

Rorem’s observation--that one from 1974--may be worth recalling as a footnote of sorts to the unsigned program notes for the production of “Virginia Woolf” that opened this weekend at the Irvine Community Theater in homage to Albee and the play’s 30th birthday later this year (it opened on Broadway on Oct. 13, 1962).

“There are, in the pantheon of American theater, only a handful of truly great plays,” the anonymous writer asserts. “Among them are Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman,’ Tennessee Williams’ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ Jason Miller’s ‘That Championship Season’ and the play you are about to see tonight.”

The writer, not without a sense of humor, adds: “These high water marks of the American stage have one common bond--all have been produced by the Irvine Community Theater.”

If they’ve been done with as much conviction as “Virginia Woolf,” that actually is something to brag about in earnest. The cast of this amateur production does the most important thing any company can do, the only thing that really counts: It makes believers of us.

The play is set on the campus of a small New England college, at the home of George and Martha, both middle-aged, childless and alcoholic. It is long past midnight. They’ve just come back, drunk as usual, from a faculty party.

George, a history professor, has been a lifelong disappointment to Martha, his senior by six years and the daughter of the college president, because he has not lived up to her father’s or her own ambitious expectations.

Despite the hour, Martha has invited a young couple new to the faculty home for a nightcap: Nick, a handsome biology professor, and his mousy wife, Honey. It isn’t long before the quartet is caught up in a round of vicious parlor games called Humiliate the Host, Hump the Hostess and Get the Guests.

Marcia Bertholf plays the bilious, abusive, embittered Martha with boozy venom, ample cleavage and an over-the-top performance as sexual aggressor that gives the ring of truth to George’s lacerating refrain for his wife: “There aren’t many more sickening sights than you with a couple of drinks in you and your skirt up over your head.”

John Parker plays George with flashes of repressed fury that break through his battered, weary resignation if only out of self-defense. He is almost, but not quite, impervious to Martha’s unrelenting insults. Tall and gray-haired, Parker looks right for the role, and his understated performance brings a necessary balance to the production.

David Gregoire succeeds less well as Nick: He starts strongly enough as something of a nerd but loses steam when he has to reveal himself as a hunk with duplicitous instincts. Christy Craven, on the other hand, manages all that is asked of her as Honey, which is to convey the cartoonish impression of an inebriated ditz.

Even if the low-budget set looks awfully sketchy--a couch, a couple of chairs, a tray of drinks and a bookshelf with a few books that seem an afterthought--the production captures the essentials of “Virginia Woolf” nonetheless.

‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’

An Irvine Community Theater production of the play by Edward Albee. Directed by Lenore Stjerne. With Marcia Bertholf, John Parker, David Gregoire and Christy Craven. Sound and lighting by Deborah Peterson. At the Turtle Rock Community Park theater, 1 Sunnyhill, Irvine. Performances Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. through Feb. 29, with a matinee Sunday at 1:30 p.m. Tickets: $5 and $6. Information: (714) 857-5496.