FLINT, MI–Not all games have winners. Some contests are so brutal that only scarred losers emerge from the duel.

So, it is with the confrontational “games” in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The bitter, cruel, booze-soaked exchanges yield a bloody battlefield scattered with emotional shrapnel.

The only winners that emerge from the three-hour battle are the audiences at Flint Repertory Theatre who experience a riveting performance of the American classic.

Albee’s masterpiece famously opens in the early hours of the morning after a faculty party. Martha, the daughter of the college president, announces to her weary husband, George, that she’s invited a new couple over for drinks. Nick, a biology professor, and his wife, Honey, arrive and the drunken couples engage in a series of increasingly bitter verbal and physical battles.

Spouse confronts spouse, colleague confronts colleague and truth confronts illusion as each layer of civility and decorum get stripped away.

Under Joshua Morgan’s direction, the four combatants keep the battle lines in constant motion, raising the stakes so that audiences stay continually engaged. It’s a challenging task that succeeds due to the absolute commitment of everyone on the artistic team, all of whom are focused on a shared, singular vision.

It starts with the four actors. Morgan engaged in color-conscious casting, deliberately layering in additional questions about power and humiliation. When Martha belittles George, there is a tremor of micro-aggression that hints at broader racial questions. George’s devious, threatening responses challenge audiences to consider their causes.

Then there is simply the overwhelming talent of the actors playing these four iconic roles.

Rico Bruce Wade takes on a role about which the playwright said, “Once you’ve played George in my play, no other role with the possible exception of Hamlet will challenge you quite as much as far as magnitude of text, complexity of language and the challenge of working on many planes at the same time.”

Wade is fully up to the task, embracing George’s complexity and teasing out multiple levels of emotion and meaning in every exchange. He invests a deep intelligence in his interpretation, creating a highly memorable George through his marriage of physicality, vocal power and emotional investment. He never hesitates with his strong choices nor even makes it look as though the role is difficult. His complete immersion presents a George who grows increasingly threatening and controlling while still able to credibly present glimmers of tenderness and affection.

Emily Townley puts in the performance of a lifetime, made all the more impressive by the fact that she was brought late into the process, replacing the original actor two weeks before the show opened. It never shows that she wasn’t a part of the cast from the beginning—the chemistry sparks and bubbles and she is in complete command of every choice. She commits to going big when needed and commands the stage with her presence. She infuses Martha with spit and vinegar while exuding a hostile, uncomfortable charisma. Every shot is perfectly timed, firing out of her well-oiled pistol with deadly aim.

Somehow, in the short amount of time before opening night, Wade and Townley manage to produce the impression that they have spent decades together. They clash like two people well aware of every weak point while touching and moving like intimates.

So strong are these two roles and the actors performing them, that it would be easy for the roles of Nick and Honey to be overshadowed. However, Kevin O’Callaghan and Amanda Kuo hold their own with the powerhouses that are their counterparts.

O’Callaghan brings an aw-shucks charisma to Nick that at first feels a little too likable. George’s accusations of Nick being smug fall flat as he is too sympathetically portrayed. However, as the night progresses, O’Callaghan peels that veneer away, eagerly joining Martha in George’s emasculation.

Kuo creates a Honey who is every feather the flighty bird that the others describe—vacuous and inebriated, oblivious to the deadly games going on around her. She demonstrates great craft in displaying a stumbling physicality and vulnerable vocal performance.

The stage allows for the creation of a spacious home, and Scott Penner, who doubles as the scenic and costume designer, makes the most of it. Bathing the set in a palette of midnight blues, Penner introduces a subtle menace, almost a foreshadowing of what is to come. The furnishings speak of a home whose inhabitants have fallen just short of success, though Props Designer Mia Irwin ensured the bar was well-stocked, drawing attention to the couple’s priorities.

Lighting Designer Mike Billings and Sound Designer (and composer of original music) Taylor J. Williams expertly coordinated special effects throughout the play that underpinned Morgan’s focused vision and contributed to the emotional symphony.

Stage combat can at times feel forced or appear fake because it is better than actors experiencing real harm. Likewise, the demands of intimacy should never cross the boundaries of the real people who must portray it. That this production—especially with one of the four having very little time to put in the repetitions that can contribute to believability—had such powerful and ardent combat and intimacy is a testimony to the skill and artistry of Alexis Black, as the fight and intimacy director.

In his director notes, Morgan states that he has set the play in 2024, but the first scene makes it difficult to accept that premise. Even while besotted with alcohol, no one today would spend several minutes grasping for the source of a movie line when they could demand an answer from Siri or Google. Cell phones are too ubiquitous in 2024 to be absent as they were in this play. Likewise, smoking no longer holds the glamour that it did in the 1960s and portraying that contemporaneously makes it difficult to suspend disbelief.

While it didn’t feel like it was in 2024, Morgan instead (intentionally or otherwise) managed to infuse the action with a sense of timelessness that tapped into the universality that makes “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” a classic. It doesn’t matter when it is. What matters are the questions raised about the games we play when dreams are frustrated, when reality is unbearable, when civility is drowned in an alcoholic stupor.

Pat Benatar sang that love is a battlefield. In that theater of war, Edward Albee’s George and Martha hold the rank of generals over a bloody, no-holds-barred conflict. Flint Repertory Theater’s artists offer their audiences a remarkable, noteworthy rendition of the iconic clash.