Tracy Letts (George) and Amy Morton (Martha) spit bile at each other in 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' at Arena Stage.

"We should talk," begins Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo. When that phrase has been preceded by a viewing of Albee's brutal masterpiece Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, one thinks, uh oh. But the talk that husband and wife Ann and Peter have is nothing like the verbal barbs that George and Martha swap in Virginia Woolf. Instead, the juxtaposition of the two plays shows that both couples are foils for each other: one marriage so close that each partner knows which words are the worst weapons, and another so detached that danger has begun to lurk under a placid surface.

The troubled couples of Virginia Woolf are well-known – the older George (Tracy Letts, actor and Pulitzer-winning playwright for August: Osage County) and Martha (Amy Morton, most recently of Up in the Air) invite newlyweds Nick (Madison Dirks) and Honey (Carrie Coon) for a nightcap after a long evening of drinking, and all hell breaks loose. Letts and Morton, who have played married couples in six prior productions, swap their famous insults ("our son, the apple of our three eyes — Martha being a cyclops...") with potent venom. Nick, whose marriage is equally but less violently troubled, skitters around the house not wide-eyed, but armed and ready for the verbal war. Even Coon, whose character is the most sympathetic of the bunch, lends Honey a sinister side as she blurts out her brandied words.

And then there's the repressed Peter and Ann, played by Jeff Allin and Colleen Delany, in recent addition to a prologue that Albee wrote for his first play, The Zoo Story. When they finally start talking, they reveal that they've been coasting on a facade of happiness for years. "You don't love me the way that I need it," says Ann, who wishes he weren't so predictable, while Peter describes their marriage as "a smooth voyage on a safe ship." They aren't giving up, but they aren't exactly trying, either.

On a trip to the park, Peter encounters an unstable drifter named Jerry (James McMenamin). Their brief interaction makes Peter more aloof, and provokes him to do something uncharacteristically impetuous – the spontaneity Ann wishes for, but channeled in the worst possible way. This comes after discussions about fantasy, spirituality, and alienation – themes that pervade both of Albee's works, and have implications for Ann, George, Martha, Nick and Honey, as well, upheld despite their unreliable narrators. Albee tells universal truths, even when his characters aren't: "Hell, I don’t know when you people are lying, or what," says Nick. "You’re damned right!" says Martha. "You’re not supposed to," says George.