Gillian Anderson as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — bold casting or a risky mismatch?
Sonia Friedman Productions has announced Gillian Anderson will play Martha in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at @sohoplace. It’s a major piece of casting — but is she the right fit for one of theatre’s most explosive roles?
There’s something faintly suspicious when a piece of casting looks perfect on paper. You scan the names, clock the pedigree, nod approvingly, and think, yes, of course. And yet, a small voice pipes up: will it actually work?
That was my immediate reaction to the announcement that Gillian Anderson will play Martha in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at @sohoplace. Admiration, followed by hesitation. Anderson is, by any reasonable measure, a formidable actor. But Martha is not a role that rewards reasonableness.
For the uninitiated, Martha is one of theatre’s great monsters. She drinks too much, talks too much, wounds for sport, and performs her own misery like it’s an Olympic event. She is also, crucially, ridiculous. The danger is always that an actor leans into the grandeur and forgets the grotesque. Anderson, for all her range, is not an obviously grotesque performer. If anything, her work tends toward control: she builds from detail, things don’t just spill out of her performances. Think of her Margaret Thatcher in The Crown, all clipped vowels and internalised steel, or Jean Milburn in Sex Education, where even at her most open she remains carefully calibrated. Then there is Dana Scully in The X-Files: forensic, composed, always in control.
That is not to say Anderson cannot do it. Her Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire proved she can access fragility and delusion without losing grip on the character. But fragility is not the same as volatility. The question is whether she will let go of that control altogether, because where Blanche unravels, Martha detonates.
And then there’s the staging at @sohoplace. In the round, there’s nowhere to hide. Every flicker of a glance, every tonal shift is observed. For some actors, the intimacy can feel like a self-imposed straightjacket, a limit on what an actor can do: big, showy choices can risk exposure. Martha, though, needs a sense of danger, a hint that she might push too far and not pull back. The audience should feel that uncertainty. Anderson is many things, but unpredictable is rarely the first word that comes to mind.
Still, perhaps that is exactly why this casting is interesting – not about giving audiences what they expect but about unsettling those expectations.There is a version of Martha that is less blustering, more constructed. A woman who has built herself, line by line, into something sharp enough to survive her marriage. Anderson has already spoken about the character as someone performing a persona. That suggests a colder, more psychological reading, one where the volatility is calculated rather than instinctive. Placed opposite Billy Crudup’s George, known for his control and intelligence, the contrast could be electric. If Anderson finds a way to marry her precision with Martha’s volatility, the result could be something genuinely new. If she doesn’t, it may all feel a little too well-behaved for a play that thrives on bad behaviour.
Either way, it will be fascinating to watch.
I’m still not completely convinced. But I’m curious.
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? opens @SOHOPLACE ON 21 SEPTEMBER 2026
21 September – 19 December 2026
Tickets from £25.00
Box Office
Telephone: 0330 333 5961
4 Soho Place | Charing Cross Road | London | W1D 3BG
Elena Leo is the Culture & Lifestyle Editor of Ikon London Magazine.
