It's fun and games with George and Martha these nights for Ovation Theatre. In Edward Albee's lethal Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the games are blood sport and the fun is not for the emotionally fragile, but it can be what is best about live theater.

        Virginia Woolf is demanding, so much so that small companies rarely attempt it. Ovation rises to the work's many challenges. It is the young company's best outing to date, even with one enormous problem, which I'll get to later.

        The play, continuing through Saturday at the Aronoff Center's Fifth Third Theater, is well worth seeing for the admirable ensemble effort; for the naked emotion of the performances; for Joe Stollenwerk's perfect direction.

        Within the context of the work done by up-and-coming companies in the Fifth Third, Virginia Woolf is the best thing in the space since New Edgecliff's The Woolgatherer last spring.

        The good times start rolling at 2 a.m. one eventful night. George (Joe Hornbaker), a lifetime ago, was a promising new faculty member when Martha (Judy Malone) decided to marry him. George's career has long since stalled. Blowsy, loud, vulgar, alcoholic but happily positioned as the middle-aged daughter of the college president, Martha is deeply disappointed with the way things have turned out.

        She is discontented as only a smart, late 1950s era woman could be. She has too much time on her hands and not enough to occupy them except a bottle. She is mean as a snake, and she and George have one of the more interesting co-dependencies in drama, modern or otherwise.

        Martha has invited the new promising faculty member Nick (Blake Bowden) over for apres faculty party cocktails and chat. Along with him comes his blond wife (Christine Brunner), such a non-entity that she doesn't have a name, merely a casual endearment, Honey.

        What the poor dears don't realize is that they've entered a take-no-prisoners chamber of horrors, well disguised by designers Cindy Brauer and Eric Bardes as a typical book-strewn professorial living room with typically indifferent furnishings and, deliciously, I do believe the Ray Coniff Singers playing on the stereo.

        The actors fling themselves into the play. Ms. Malone does everything but bleed on stage. She is splendid, but so is Ms. Brunner, who mines Honey's awful fragility. She is wonderful when she's listening with nearly complete incomprehension to the dangerous conversations flowing around her. (From here Ms. Brunner joins the company of Actor's Rep in Middletown, which makes a ride there inevitable.)

        Mr. Bowden, an Ovation ensemble member, is always watchable. Smarmy, studly, fast-tracking Nick is exactly the intense kind of role at which he excels.

        What would never happen in a professional production is Mr. Hornbaker's George. His performance isn't bad; it's wrong. Mr. Hornbaker and Mr. Stollenwerk have settled on an interpretation that is rage-filled, but instead of being emasculated, this George has a stereotyped gay feyness. It muddies every significant motivation around it.

        Suddenly Martha's discontent has an overpowering reason Mr. Albee never intended: She's been married to a gay man for 23 years.

        Virginia Woolf is off-kilter but not off-course and another strong showing from professional-tracking Ovation.
       Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, through Saturday, Fifth Third Theater, Aronoff Center, 241-7469.

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