Sydney Reviews

Who’s afraid of verging on Woolf?

Not Sarah Walker whose Who’s Afraid is a deliciously ribald comedy concerning a womb of one’s, or more, own.

It’s New Year’s Eve, 2019, and Nikki and David and Georgie and Marty are returning from a night at the theatre where they have seen a production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? To begin with we do not know who is partner to whom until the hetero-normative perception is turned on its head and the nitty gritty of the night ahead is proclaimed.

Marty, monied and mature, wants to be a gay daddy. His toy boy, bi-sexual David, thinks his dance class partner, Nikki and /or her partner, Georgia, would be suitable candidates for impregnation, gestation and delivery. The New Year’s Eve soiree is set to seal the deal in sperm delivery.

There’s consent but conflict. The females think the sperm donor should be the younger David, for health, hair and height reasons. Also, as the nominated receptacle, Georgia wants to receive the sperm naturally.

There’s more than a subtle salute to Albee’s classic play of thwarted parenthood, impotence, infidelity, and complacent and complicit cruelty. Namesakes abound – Martha becomes Marty, George, Georgia, Nick becomes Nikki and Honey becomes David – but they are not set to parroting or parody, rather a springboard to launch into the subject of offspring, surrogacy and sexual identity.

The verbal sadism is reduced but Walker’s wily wordsmithing scores quick comic points with incisive invective in this blackly analytical merry go round. Power is a persistent component as is the alternation of pleasure and pain that pervades and nourishes the partnerships.

Meaningful distortions of the idea of the hysterical pregnancy from Albee’s play are picked up and unpacked in this black analytical comedy provoking an exploration into the parenting aspect of queer life, and procreation in general; the efficacy of spawning new life in an over populated, polluted, pox ridden world.

Who’s Afraid is a mixed doubles match well served by an ace set of players. Danielle Cormack as Nikki, Nicole da Silva as Georgia, David Franklin as Marty, and Joshua Shediak as David, under the finely paced direction of Brendon McDonall.