BWW Reviews: A DELICATE BALANCE Stirs, but Doesn't Shake

There are those who will tell you that Edward Albee's 1967 Pulitzer Prize for A Delicate Balance was an apology for his not receiving the 1963 award for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (The jury recommended his drama for the prize, but the board overruled and decided not to award a play that year.) Nevertheless, it's an intriguing bit of domestic psychological warfare.

Director Pam MacKinnon did a riveting job two years ago with a Virginia Woolf that went against the usual grain, but her starry production of his lesser known showcase of self-involved upper middle class WASPs imbibing, bantering and loathing has its stumbling points. It's a fine production overall but, like the numerous cocktails that are consumed during the drama, emotions are stirred, but not shaken.

Designers Santo Loquasto (set) and Ann Roth (costumes) do a splendid job of defining the lavish, but bland existence of suburbanites Agnes and Tobias. Glenn Close is cool and stately as the subtly controlling lady of the house, though perhaps too aloof to make a more desired impact. John Lithgow, a hulking man with an impeccable talent for playing spineless characters, is more effective as Tobias, playing him as a gentleman of understated elegance who seems embarrassed by confrontation.

Not having shared a bed for years, theirs is a marriage of comfortable habit.

Lindsay Duncan comes off as too soft in the play's showcase role of Claire, Agnes' alcoholic sister with a penchant for acerbic zingers. "It's only the first I'm not supposed to have," she quips while requesting a refill.

The title condition of the household is upset one day by the unexpected arrival of Agnes and Tobias' best friends, Edna and Harry (an excellent Clare Higgins evolving from pleasingly warm to downright cruel and a deadpan Bob Balaban), who insist that they need to stay for an unspecified amount of time because of some unspecified terror. (Such oblique metaphors are an Albee specialty.)

Further tension is raised by the arrival of Agnes and Tobias' daughter Julia (Martha Plimpton, adding much-needed energy into the evening and made to somewhat resemble a young Lauren Bacall), who, fresh from her fourth divorce, expected to be welcomed back to her old room, now occupied by Edna and Harry.

As reality, or at least Edward Albee's absurdist representation of it, threatens to upset the carefully maintained delicate balance of their household, it becomes apparent that either Agnes or Tobias must take a stand.

Such a stand might also need to be taken to maintain the delicate balance of Edward Albee's play.

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