CHAMPION — The audience never sees the boxing gloves that figure prominently in one of the many emasculating stories Martha tells about her husband, George, in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

However, boxing feels like an apt metaphor to use to describe Kent State University at Trumbull’s production of the show, which opened Friday and continues this weekend.

It’s an evening filled with verbal jabs and emotional gut punches between George, a not-quite-successful-enough associate professor of history at a northeastern college, and Martha, the daughter of the college’s president. Daddy isn’t a character in the play, but his presence looms beyond the painting of him in the couple’s living room.

That living room is their ring, where George and Martha hash out old disappointments and look for fresh ways to pick at the scabs so they never heal. On this night, they have some sparring partners — Nick, an ambitious new biology professor and his mousy wife, Hunny — a couple Martha invites to the house for an after-party at 2:30 a.m. following a faculty mixer.

Like an amateur boxing match, “Woolf” has three rounds (acts), although the demands on the cast may be equal to or even exceed stepping into the ring.

An old-school, 15-round heavyweight fight would last only an hour. Saturday’s performance ran a little past three-and-a-half hours, including two 10-to-15-minute intermissions.

The sheer volume of dialogue memorized by Peter and Deborah Byrne as George and Martha — and to a lesser extent by Harmon Andrews and Jessica Ludovici as Nick and Hunny — is a Herculean feat on its own. The complexity of that dialogue makes it even more impressive. It’s emotionally draining to watch; I can only imagine how taxing it is for the actors.

The performances under the sure-handed direction of Thomas Engstrom are so compelling, it almost pulls the viewer out of the story. I found myself at times marveling at the execution instead of focusing on the subtleties and verbal assaults in Albee’s script.

Peter Byrne’s George endures much of the humiliation in the play, but his portrayal shows George as the puppet master of the proceedings. He makes sure the liquor glasses stay full to weaken his opponents, and the way he accepts Martha’s brazen attacks and Nick’s less-overt shots is his own version of Muhammad Ali’s rope-a-dope, lulling his opponent into a false sense of dominance only to reveal his total control when they least expect it.

Deborah Byrne strikes a perfect balance with Martha. It’s a character that could be played as one continuous scream, but she lets those bellows punctuate certain moments without wearing out her voice or the audience members’ eardrums. And the pain powering those bellows always feels just below the surface.

Andrews deftly captures a character who starts out confident, grossly underestimates his adversaries and ends up revealing his own desperation and deficiencies. Hunny is the smallest of the four roles, but Ludovici nudges along the action in her early scenes and convincingly shows both Hunny’s brandy-fueled slide into sickness and her discomfort as her own marriage is threatened by the broadsides hurled by George and Martha.

Engstrom never lets the pacing lag. It’s a single set and a marathon play, but the characters are in constant motion without it feeling contrived. He also knows how to build tension and how to let it lag just enough so its return is that much more intense.

The set design by Kathalina Plummer has some elements of Expressionism, and those sharp corners on the wall panels mimic the sharp elbows being thrown by the cast. Cord Ramsey’s lighting design is simple and effective, but there also are some dazzling moments. In a late scene when Hunny comes downstairs after one of her frequent bouts of illness, the lighting makes her look luminescent.

I’m not going to lie, “Virginia Woolf” isn’t an easy watch. It’s very long, but like “Oppenheimer,” the overwhelming favorite to win the Academy Award for best picture on Sunday, it doesn’t feel as long as its three-hour running run.

Because of its length and the demands on its cast, it’s not a play that gets staged regularly, especially not by college and community theaters. But any list of the best American plays of the last 75 or 100 years likely would include Albee’s work, and Kent-Trumbull’s production does it justice.