It’s hard to say what takes more stamina — to strut the stage in the roles of the foul-mouthed, insult-slinging, booze-swilling characters in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or to sit through the emotionally draining performance as a member of the audience. Theatre royalty and the NYC elite couldn’t wait to fill the seats at the opening of the first Broadway production in 30 years of this classic Edward Albee play, now at the Longacre Theatre. Sultry screen siren and seasoned stage actress Kathleen Turner stars as Martha, the bitter, unfulfilled daughter of a New England college president. Tony Award-winner Bill Irwin is her embattled spouse, a slyly ambitious, underachieving history professor on campus. As the couple return home at 2:00 a.m., an inebriated Martha reveals that she has invited Nick, a new biology professor (played by David Harbour) and his meek wife, Honey (portrayed by Mireille Enos) for after-party drinks. The couple’s escalating violent, verbal sparring and psychic one-upmanship alternately fascinate and intimidate their shell-shocked guests (and the audience!), ending in an exhausted dawn draw.

Turner and Irwin heroically step into very large shoes, definitively defined by Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill in the original 1962 Broadway production and by Colleen Dewhurst and Ben Gazarra in the 1976 revival. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were masterfully paired by Mike Nichols in the 1966 film adaptation.

Voyeurs of the drama on stage and off — at the Bond 45 after-party included: Playwright Albee (who left before curtain), director Anthony Page, producer Daryl Roth, Mayor Bloomberg and Diana Taylor, Elaine Stritch, James Nederlander Jr. and Margo MacNabb, Patricia Neal, Paula Vogel, George Grizzard (who played Nick in the 1962 cast), Scott Rudin, Michael Riedel, Cherry Jones, Anna Deavere Smith, Jessye Norman, Marian Seldes, Charles Busch, and songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. An invigorating, non-stop, thrill of a performance....