Elizabeth Ashley A Little Afraid Of `Virginia Woolf'

The voice is redolent of whiskey, cigarettes and the South. The personality is strictly large-scale, the energy just shy of manic. The face is memorably beautiful, the intellect fierce.

And so when you hear that Elizabeth Ashley will play the combative, complex Martha in Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at the Coconut Grove (Fla.) Playhouse, you think: Of course.

Though she's a stage veteran, this is the first time Ashley has merged with an Albee character. She has done lots of Tennessee Williams, from her temperature-raising Maggie in the 1974 Broadway revival of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" to November's Off-Broadway production of "The Red Devil Battery Sign," which earned her gushing reviews for her sheer stage presence.

She'll readily tell you she is "on the dark side of 50" (57, to be precise), but the been-there, done-that Ashley looks damn good, in much better shape than she was when playing opposite old pal Burt Reynolds on TV's "Evening Shade."

Her mood? Intense, dramatic panic because delays in producing "Battery" pushed the end of that show up against rehearsals for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Comparing the dialogue of the two great playwrights, Ashley said, "Edward does more 180s than Tennessee, and they're not cued inwardly. At any moment the play can go any way. But there has to be that visceral thing, where the audience goes, `Oh, yeah.' It makes it extraordinarily hard to learn."

Her co-star, Frank Converse, is feeling the pressure, too.

"Edward's language is very specific, though it may not appear to be. It makes us crazy," said Converse.

The short rehearsal time aside, the cast's jitters are understandable - if only because Albee is here through their opening, and is very detailed and vocal about having his plays done precisely as written.

Still, no matter how artfully Ashley expresses her anxiety, you have a rock-bottom faith that she'll get Martha. After all, this is a woman who survived an early career nervous breakdown and made it through three tempestuous marriages.

Conceding that "Martha is the engine that makes it happen to (Martha's husband) George," Ashley seems ready for a high-speed drive: "All I've ever wanted in life is a pit pass to Indy, sugar."