Sit back in a safe seat and watch bickering elevated to an art form.

Byline: Review by FRED CRAFTS The Register-Guard

ASHLAND - For a ripping good time, spend an evening with George and Martha. It'll kill you. Especially the "Get the Guest" game.

George is a master at the psychological parlor game in which he peels his guests one layer at a time, like an onion, until there is nothing left but debris. Once on the attack, he is relentless and vicious. He is the undisputed master. Nobody stands a chance against him.

Well, except maybe his wife, Martha.

Martha is a first-rate player in her own right. Her tactics are less confrontational than George's, but just as effective. George may make the big messes, but Martha nimbly cleans up around the edges. They are a formidable couple - a one-two punch.

Of course, if George and Martha are winning, then that means somebody is losing, and on this occasion the losers are a young couple, Nick and Honey, whom George and Martha batter and squeeze like a sadistic cat toying with a mouse.

Watching all this unfold has the morbid fascination of observing a train wreck in slow motion; it is horrifying and gripping at the same time. Timothy Bond's stunning production of Edward Albee's classic "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" in the Bowmer Theatre provides a safe seat.

Written 40 years ago, perhaps to protest Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh," the drama has stood the test of time, not only because it is brilliantly written but because everyone, to their everlasting sorrow, has known someone just like George and Martha. Many couples excel at bickering, but these quarrelers elevate their duels to an art form. Playing fair is simply not in their rule book.

While these are the sort of unbalanced folks most of us would avoid at all costs, confronting them in the darkened theater is a revelatory experience. George and Martha's destructive little games have a kind of method to their madness; their spats are a form of purification, a ritualistic cleansing, that is at times as comical as it is absurd.

Director Bond turns up the heat very slowly. George and Martha return home from a faculty reception in a foul mood. She is fueled with alcohol; he is irked that she has invited a young couple over for drinks. George and Martha are in the middle of having it out when the young couple arrives. The evening unravels from there.

Andrea Frye plays Martha as one tough cookie. She is a tall, powerful woman who uses her physical presence and braying voice to cower her opponents. When that doesn't work, she resorts to cutesy-pie feminine wiles. At first, she appears to steamroll her demure husband (played with reserve by the volcanic Richard Elmore) and it appears we are in for the mismatch of the century.

Then, carefully, with the unerring hand of a consummate surgeon, Elmore sets to work. Moment by moment, slice by slice, he takes his opponents apart: first Martha, then the young couple. It is a tour de force not to be missed.

The other half of the equation in this four-person play is Nick and Honey - earnest young nebbishes who are totally unequipped for this den of vipers. Jeff Cummings and Christine Williams are wholly believable and sympathetic victims.

Bond's staging of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" is theater at its best - gripping, moving and provocative. The way he encourages George to play his nasty little games, we are the winners.