A DELICATE BALANCE, Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning masterwork returns to Broadway with an extraordinary cast.
In A DELICATE BALANCE, Agnes (Glenn Close) and Tobias (John Lithgow), a long-married couple, must maintain their equilibrium as over the course of a weekend they welcome home their 36-year-old daughter (Martha Plimpton) after the collapse of her fourth marriage, and give shelter to their best friends (Bob Balaban and Clare Higgins), all the while tolerating Agnes' alcoholic sister Claire (Lindsay Duncan).
The Daily News calls A DELICATE BALANCE "a beautiful play- easily Albee's best and most mature, filled with humor and compassion and touched with poetry." It "proves that old-fashioned stage virtues- originality of voice, depth of feeling, richness of language- can still provide a thrill" (TIME Magazine). "If you really care about serious theatre, brilliant theatre, great acting, and great playwriting, this is the only play to see on Broadway" (New York Post).
'A Delicate Balance' proves to be the perfect vehicle for Close...On the surface, Agnes seems like an easy role to play -- a cold, emotionless monster who always appears to be in control. But Close paints a much more complex portrait. Her Agnes is a woman carrying layers of sadness and loss under that strength; A woman who allows herself to breathe through humor and love. It's a transfixing performance. Understated, yet the glue that holds everyone together. And Albee's words -- often presented in long, compound, poignant paragraphs -- will sound like pure poetry coming out of Close's mouth...Lithgow never lets us think that Tobias is a fool. He's just walked away from the battlefield. And when Tobias eventually returns to the fight in a pivotal scene in the play's third act, Lithgow leaves him raw, exposed and completely defenseless. MacKinnon, who won a Tony for directing the 2012 revival of Albee's 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,' guides these greats through the author's lengthy literature wisely, striking her own delicate balance between pacing and performance.
At least Glenn Close is entertaining and fun to watch in the new, blunt revival of Edward Albee's 'A Delicate Balance'...Close has this way of turning her black-button eyes into tiny holes that don't so much see out as burrow their way into her skull...Her performance is also why this 'Delicate Balance,' directed by Pam Mackinnon, is blunt and unsubtle. And turning Agnes into an uncompromising gargoyle is only part of the monochromatic scheme at work here. Not entertaining and fun are Plimpton's merely loud Julia and Duncan's monotonous Claire, a performance that exposes a serious flaw in Albee's play: Claire, besides being clairvoyant and delivering a few amusing wisecracks, serves no function in act three...Back in the 1960s, Albee was accused of turning his female characters into harridans. Mackinnon's work with these three actresses, unfortunately, makes that case...Lithgow and Balaban give some semblance of playing human beings. Lithgow's delivery of Tobias' famous cat speech is especially multi-faceted.
1966 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1996 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2014 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2022 | Off-Broadway |
Transport Group Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
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