A new production of Edward Albee’s classic play ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ has opened at the Booth theatre in New York, starring Amy Morton, Tracy Letts, Madison Dirks and Carrie Coon.

This current production opened 50 years to the day that Albee’s “landmark drama” first opened on Broadway. The action of the play takes place in the living room of a history professor and his wife. With another couple visiting for the evening, and plenty of liquor to hand, a battle of wits ensues and marital tensions rise to the surface. When they play debuted 50 years ago, it marked Albee as one of the most important American playwrights of his time.

Saturday’s opening night performance, however, rubber-stamped Tracy Letts’ acting talent, five years after winning a Tony Award and a Pulitzer prize as a playwright. Under Pam McKinnon’s direction, the New York Times remarked that Letts brought “a coiled ferocity to George that all but reorders our responses to a play that many of us probably thought had by now vouchsafed all its surprises.”

Though the New York Times focuses its praise on Tracy Lett’s performance, NorthJersey.com also commend the talents of the director, whose “pitch perfect staging” allows the show’s stars to truly shine. “The production is… remarkably funny. It's hard to decide whether it's a scathing comedy or a rollicking tragedy.” ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ may be half a century old but this latest production proves that it hasn't lost any of the appeal or the potential for psychological drama that it had when it was first staged.