Are you happily married? Would you like to be? Are you sure? If you answered yes to any two of these questions, you might not know about the partnership whose problems are being aired in Midtown. The union seemed like such a good idea at the beginning, a long-awaited match. But complications ensued. Now the principals stagger on beneath the weight of their woes.

I refer to the wobbly marriage of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and its stars, Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin. The play opened last night at the Long acre, its first appearance on Broadway in 25 years. This is a Big Deal. Mr. Albee is protective of his play, as you would be, if you had written one of the most devastating dramas of the American stage. He has waited a long time to find a couple who he thinks can do justice to the lead characters. Now and then Anthony Page’s production shows you why Mr. Albee had reason to be enthusiastic. Still you may find yourself wishing he’d waited a little longer.

Written in 1962, Mr. Albee’s play is an autopsy performed on the living. The characters writhe and flap under the microscope, but they’re not going anywhere. (The play runs three hours, and earns every coruscating, alcohol-fueled minute.) History professor George and his scabrous wife Martha have a torturous marriage; their soused late-night guests, young biology professor Nick and younger spouse Honey, have problems of their own.

The monographs-and-symposia crowd hail Mr. Albee’s play because he shows how constructive lies accrue in any relationship, and because of its cryptic nooks and crannies of allegory. But the play has broader popularity thanks to its humor. The perverse brilliance of Mr. Albee’s characters is that their assaults on one another take the form of games. George has little names for each of these episodes in very dark comedy: Humiliate the Host, Hump the Hostess, Get the Guests, and the grand finale: Bringing Up Baby.

Ms. Turner, with her caustic wit, cast-iron pipes, and no-B.S. sensibility, wrings from Martha all the combative humor you could hope to enjoy. She has a huge onstage presence, and excels when Martha says something that isn’t, strictly speaking, a joke. “If you existed I’d divorce you,” she growls to George. Mr. Irwin is no comic slouch, either. He’s one of our foremost clowns, but he’s got dramatic chops too, having won strong reviews after replacing Bill Pullman in Mr. Albee’s “The Goat” three years ago. He finds the right note of passive aggression in George’s slyly proffered insults. “Martha?” he asks, heading for the bar. “Rubbing alcohol for you?” Watching Mr. Irwin, I thought of Archie Rice, the embittered music hall comic in John Osborne’s “The Entertainer.”

So far so good. But as the play wears on, Mr. Albee keeps twisting the pins that fasten his specimens to the board. Ms. Turner shows a real flair for breaking other people down – her husband, the guest she wants to seduce, the guest whose husband she wants to seduce – but doesn’t seem able to break down herself. In one of her more revealing moments, Martha reflects on her relationship with her father, which explains so much of her antipathy to George. (Martha is to “daddy’s girl” what Medea is to “tough mom.”) Ms. Turner sheds her armor for this long speech, thereby revealing. . . more armor. “I cry all the time too, Daddy. I cry alllll the time; but deep inside, so no one can see me,” she says, leaving me pretty well unmoved.

Mr. Irwin fights back, of course, but it’s not the same as having a sense of attack. In the famous 1966 film incarnation, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor looked as though they really might destroy each other; it was a fair fight. Mr. Irwin takes his swipes at Ms. Turner on the fly, from oblique angles. It’s a valid and even an interesting way to play George, but when the script calls on Mr. Irwin to go completely on the offensive, the battle doesn’t resound. He’s impish, grasping, and seems no match for Ms. Turner’s Martha, no matter what the script might say.

The visiting couple, those nutty lovebirds Nick and Honey, features a pleasant surprise and a pleasant confirmation. Over the past few years, David Harbour has proven himself a reliable talent in Shakespeare (“Two Noble Kinsmen”), Stoppard (“The Invention of Love”) and new plays (Joe Hortua’s “Between Us”). Tall, blond, and so healthy-seeming as to be almost vulgar, Nick is full of brusque self-regard and high-minded hypocrisy. Mr. Harbour shines here, lacking only the willingness to shatter and stay shattered: After he tries his hand (so to speak) at Hump the Hostess, he finds it too easy to put himself back in polite cocktail party shape.

Honey is the smallest of the four roles, but no less tricky than the others. With her goofy, near-constant grin, Mireille Enos gives Honey the right balance of assertiveness and vulnerability, drunkenness and lucidity. She hadn’t made a strong impression in some earlier roles, but this performance is carefully, elegantly done. Ms. Enos also has a voice all her own, a unique sort of pronunciation that underscores how out of place Honey is in this awful scene. (Does William F. Buckley have a niece? This must be how she sounds.)

John Lee Beatty, that king of the domestic interior, has designed just the right scenery: a lived-in room that still feels weirdly sterile. Lighting designer Peter Kaczorowski bathes the scene in a wonderful kind of luminous gloom. It’s an excellent look until daybreak, which doesn’t quite come off. Still the design does what it’s supposed to do: By the end of the play we are braced for a knockout blow.

Some lovely, riveting moments aside, Mr. Page and his stars don’t deliver it. Make no mistake – Ms. Turner and Mr. Irwin are both actors of considerable skill. But like all actors, except maybe three in a decade, they have their limits, and they exceed them here. In some ways, each actor complicates the other’s performance. Ms. Turner’s invulnerable Martha might look better next to a stainless steel George; Mr. Irwin’s sneaking, shifty George would stack up better alongside a viperous Martha. Alas, the current mix makes Mr. Irwin seem a puddle, and Ms. Turner the dreadnought plowing through it. The moral of the story? Go ahead, marry. But make sure you cast very well.