A Delicate Balance

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is certainly Edward Albee's most famous play, and it is one of my favorites (maybe my favorite favorite), so I was pleased to become acquainted with another of his plays, that is perhaps unfairly forgotten in contrast. A Delicate Balance, written in 1965 and winner of Albee's first of three Pulitzer Prizes, covers some of the same ground as Virginia Woolf, but in a much slier, evasive way. I saw a smashing production of it, directed by Emily Mann, at the McCarter Theater this week.

The play is set in a "well-appointed suburban home. Now." Agnes (Kathleen Chalfont) and her husband Tobias (John Glover) are relaxing with pre-dinner drinks. They are sophisticated, articulate people, who probably don't own a pair of jeans. Agnes is drinking cognac, Tobias anisette. He's trying to read his book, but Agnes talks about her fear of going mad. She is also annoyed at her sister Claire (Penny Fuller), who lives with them and is a first-class lush. Also occupying her thoughts are their daughter, who is on her fourth husband and is having marital problems.

Into this somewhat familiar domestic drama come house guests--their best friends Harry (James A. Stephens) and Edna (Robert Maxwell). Why are they there? Hard to say, and in fact, it's only after some obfuscation that they declare that they have experienced an unspecified terror. They can not go home, and set up camp in their friends home.

The daughter, Julie (Francesca Faridany) arrives with her tail between her legs and finds Harry and Edna occupying "her room." She pouts and whines, a 36-year-old woman who still acts like a little girl. Claire, who has most of the best lines, watches from the sideline, bemused by it all. But Agnes and Tobias don't know what to do--turn their friends out, and take them in as permanent guests?

There's a lot going on here, and I wish had a copy of script to quote directly, because the language is exquisite. Agnes is articulate, she sneeringly apologizes for it to Claire, but so is Tobias. The dialogue is so rich that it was almost intoxicating. At times is mixed the sacred and the profane--Claire mentions of Agnes' youth that she wasn't above getting her "pudenda stuffed." What's great about the relationship between the two sisters is that Agnes, though she despises her sister's alcoholism, can't help but laugh at her shenanigans.

Beyond the language, there is an undercurrent of dread. There is a dead child referred to, and the presence of Harry and Edna is chalked up to a disease--Agnes describes their terror as a plague, and it has entered the sanctum of their home. Tobias, seemingly weak-willed, is appointed by Agnes as the one who must decide, even if it appears she has "ruled the roost" for many years.

At times the play is raucously funny, as the situation becomes so absurd it can't help but be, such as when Julie, reduced to hysterics, grabs a pistol and waves it around. But, like George and Martha in Virginia Woolf, there has been an understanding reached between Agnes and Tobias that is deadly serious.

Mann has taken a great cast and made them impeccable. I didn't detect a false note in any of the performances, but I hold great esteem for Chalfont, Glover, and Faridany, who perfectly embodied a woman who has never cut the umbilical cord, even if she has walked down the aisle four times. How many 36-year-olds still have a room waiting for them in their parents' homes?

Incidentally, like Virginia Woolf, there is a lot of drinking in this play. Maybe not as much, but it's pretty staggering, as they even drink on a Sunday morning. It's clear Albee knows his way around a dry sink, or knows people who are. Between this play, the production of Virginia Woolf, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that I saw last month, I have a hangover.