Before getting married, couples should spend three hours at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in Madison.
If they remain committed to wedlock after Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? they are ready for the altar.
Edward Albee’s famous 1962 play plunges viewers into a marriage so toxic, the theater should hand out N95 masks.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, directed by Nisi Sturgis and running through Sept. 27, 2026, is the eat-your-spinach program of the theatrical canon. It’s the dues one must pay for all the guilty pleasures — the mannerly comedies and slapstick howlers, the Enchanted Aprils and Gentleman’s Guides to Love and Murder.
There are laughs amidst Woolf’s carnage — the guilty kind you regret from old schoolyard taunts, or new memes you don’t dare repeat in polite company.
To be clear, there is nothing polite about the middle-aged George and Martha — not to be confused with the tender First Couple who bivouacked in Morristown during the Revolution — or the emotional savagery these two inflict on each other and on Honey and Nick, the young marrieds who innocently accept an invitation to stop by for a nightcap after a party.
They all belong to a small college community in...