Paul Gross, Martha Burns on bringing real-life marital history to ‘Virginia Woolf’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/01/2025 (633 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO – Being married is not a prerequisite to portraying the tortured couples at the heart of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” but Paul Gross and Martha Burns certainly see the advantage of being able to draw on their own longtime union in order to inhabit the stormy characters.

The veteran stage and screen stars each credit an unspoken shorthand with helping them prepare for a new spin on the fiery duo of George and Martha for a Canadian Stage production that starts previews on Saturday and formally opens Jan. 23.

Not to suggest they share so much in common with the explosive couple, who have come to epitomize marital toxicity and dysfunction in the decades since Edward Albee’s 1962 masterpiece hit the stage.

During a rehearsal break, Burns and Gross sat shoulder-to-shoulder on a damask sofa, chuckling over whether their decision to share the stage was a good one.

“It was either going to be like a really bad idea, or a good idea,” says Burns, married 37 years to the “Due South” and “Passchendaele” star.

“The brilliance of his writing is capturing the tiny details of what the long relationship can be, or how people play games with each other…. You realize: ‘Oh, I’ve got quite an arsenal to draw from here,’ just in terms of all the tense moments of a relationship. They just come in handy.”

Gross agrees, citing “a real shortcut” that negates any need for “long conversations about what a long relationship is like” and easy access to the emotions and interpersonal dynamics that come with a decades-long partnership.

“We have one. And so an awful lot of stuff just kind of shows up without needing to be talked about much,”says Gross, describing layered characters who reveal “a lot of deep, weird stuff” as they’re flayed open.

Knowing your scene partner well also means that any sexually charged elements that would otherwise demand cautious conversations about boundaries are already resolved, he adds.

“If we were strangers, it would have to (involve) an intimacy coach, nowadays,” Gross says of a “frisky moment in the play.”

“We don’t need coaching on it.”

Albee’s marriage story is likely best known by way of a searing 1966 film adaptation that put then-superstars and real-life couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the roles of browbeaten George, a middle-aged associate history professor, and his boisterous older wife Martha, the daughter of the school’s president who is an unseen but persistent influence on their relationship.

The action begins with the inebriated couple returning home from a faculty party hosted by Martha’s father, and preparing for the arrival of the school’s new hire in the biology department, Nick, and his wife, Honey.

It soon descends into an ugly exorcism of bitter resentments and long buried secrets, with both couples drawn into toxic mind games that force them to reassess their bonds and confront painful truths.

Real-life married couple Mac Fyfe and Hailey Gillis play the younger duo, who are only in their 20s in the original script, but aged 10 years for this production to better match the actors. Similarly, George and Martha are aged 10 years to better match the silver-haired Gross and Martha, whose banter with the younger couple simmers with intergenerational hostility.

Fyfe, whose stage credits include directing another Albee play, “The Zoo Story,” gushed over the writing in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”

“The trick is to find out where they’re lying,” says Fyfe, wed to Gillis for 10 years.

“Albee does this incredible job of hiding that and slowly revealing: oh, there’s a little something there, and it’s in the reaction to that. It’s very, very subtle, very, very incredible writing.”

Fyfe adds that the story remains relevant today, noting his character’s expertise in genetic and chromosome research remains a hot topic.

“The kind of things that he’s researching, and he’s working on (are) very, very right now, and for the time, it would have been cutting-edge. And the kind of things that George extrapolates out of that is very much of concern right now.”

Gillis also saw much that current audiences can relate to, finding the twists and turns “still shocking.”

“I don’t actually think we talk about marriage in an open way in our society still, or relationships,” says Gillis.

“I think we talk about, that divorce is an option and separation is an option and we’re open to that, I think, as a society. But I don’t actually think we talk about how cruel people can be – cruel to each other and stay together… It’s exposed in this and I think an audience today will be like, ‘Whoa, OK. They’re speaking to each other like this, wow. And they love each other.”

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” runs until Feb. 9.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 16, 2025.