The years may have softened its shock value, but three decades after it first opened on Broadway, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" remains a potent piece of American drama.

What's more, Robert Foxworth and Marlo Thomas - yes, "That Girl" Marlo Thomas - give startlingly effective performances as George and Martha, Edward Albee's brawling, boozing couple, in the first-rate revival now running through Feb. 8 at Hartford Stage.The play always was a marathon - both in terms of length and emotional power. In that respect, it is comparable to Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night," another tale of failure, shattered illusions, recrimination and tormented self-examination.

Despite the fact that the plot of "Virginia Woolf" - which is set in the early 1960s - doesn't seem dated, Albee has made several minor changes in the language of the play. He has coarsened a few of the obscenities to make the drama more realistic for today's audiences. In 1962, several critics complained that Martha swore like a Marine drill sergeant. In 1992, she doesn't sound any worse than a precocious, if volatile, high school student.

The direct, almost simple story line is almost claustrophobic in its intensity. Even on Hartford's large thrust stage, its sense of suffocating lives comes through. George, a weak-willed history professor, and his wife, Martha, daughter of the college president, have been fighting with each other for most of their married lives.

Their long night's journey into day drinking session with Nick, a young, ambitious biology teacher, and Honey, Nick's scatterbrained wife, sets the stage for angry, brutal, yet often hilarious, recriminations.

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At more than three hours in length, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" makes for a long evening. But the chance to watch George and Martha exorcize their personal demons, particularly in a production as fine as this one, is worth the exhaustion.

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