Three months since Nearly Naked Theatre’s “The House of Yes” closed its run at Phoenix Theatre’s Little Theatre, its subfuscous family of creepy, dysfunctional ghosts is still haunting the playhouse’s stage.

It’s infested The Shakespeare Theatre’s flawed, but still deeply moving, production of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” — a show that is less like a theater production and more like being strapped in for a three-and-a-half-hour roller coaster ride of tense, menacing and revelatory psychological proportions. When done right, it’s supposed to be uncomfortable. What’s not in this production, though, is Albee’s compassionate resolution — which makes for something ghastlier.

The play takes place entirely in the living room of college history professor George (played by Wes Martin) and his wife, Martha (Rebecca Siegel), the daughter of the college’s president. Across three acts, we are introduced to the couple’s verbal assaults — think “The War of the Roses,” only with smarter, bloodier tongues, or “The Honeymooners” with tears instead of a laugh track — and play witness when they turn their simmering loathing on a younger couple, young biology prof Nick (Joe Flowers) and Honey (Shannon Power).

Both couples have child — or lack thereof — issues, and deal with them in their own contrasting forms of denial. As the night turns to morning and drinks are continually refilled, layers are peeled away, revealing surprises that evoke horror, pathos, the blackest comedy and, when all is assumed headed for the rocks, a glimmer of hope.

But hope is in short supply with this production. Director Rob Evans has allowed his veteran actors to overshadow their younger cast mates letting Martin and Siegel — superb actors, both — slice through their insanity with serrated precision while the younger ones can only respond to it; in the end Nick and Honey are reduced to little more than hollow victims trapped in a horror house.

The spotlight is on Martin’s oft-hilarious, commanding performance as bitter George, whose career never quite matched up to his, or his wife’s, anticipation, and whose marriage of “accommodation” and “adjustment” has yielded nothing but venom; An otherwise Milquetoast shell of a man, all he has left to control is where the venom is slung. Martin could play him with a straighter face, but he doesn’t, and it looks as if he’s really having fun up there.

Meanwhile, Siegel one-ups Elizabeth Taylor (who did the 1966 movie version of “Virginia Woolf”) by giving her Martha more nuance, more sex, more cooing that turns to seething. Martin and Siegel together share a complex chemistry that only adds to the show’s depth.

By contrast, Flowers is only occasionally interesting as a young man who married for money but has designs on taking over the college someday (by playing musical beds). And as his Honey, Power rarely climbs above being a silly, sick drunk whose own secrets are revealed in a mushy blur that doesn’t help newcomers to Albee’s taut storyline. Together, they’re not quite together.

The mismatched power of performances means we spend a good chunk of the play considering Nick and Honey as if we’re the audience at “The Amityville Horror”: “Why don’t you just leave? Do what the voice says! Get out!”

Still, like chocolate, even when a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” is bad, it’s still pretty good. While director Evans and company haven’t quite got a handle on bringing all of Albee’s brilliance to life, they’ve made a spirited attempt.