Keir Dullea, Lisa Emery, Jonathan Hogan, Mia Dillon, Maureen Anderman, and Mia Barron in A Delicate Balance. Directed by David Auburn, All production photos by Jaime Davidson.
Maureen Anderman as Agnes.
Edward Albee’s play A Delicate Balance is the work that earned the writer his first Pulitzer Prize in 1967. He earned two more, for Seascape in 1975 and Three Tall Women in 1994. Yet the play he is best known for remains his 1963 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf which opened to mixed reviews, and played a paltry 166 performances. Both Virginia Woolf and A Delicate Balance are works that deal with relationships, involve two couples, and have a streak of mean spirited nastiness underneath their oh-so-proper drawing room manners. That is a point that Albee has been making all his life, that there is often disorder and dysfunction behind the pretense of propriety and social station.
All is not as it seems in the monied worlds of Westchester, Greenwich and Pride’s Crossing where the cosseted and secure live out their lives around their cocktail hours and social small talk in which one, never, ever, says anything directly. Except in the second and third acts of an Albee play, of course, where in Virginia Woolf, the whole charade unravels, and in A Delicate Balance, the power pivot point teeter-totters, throwing all the riders off their delicate roles. Virginia Woolf may be the play with the most fireworks – though A Delicate Balance surely has its share of bombs bursting in midact. There are also the subtle sounds of hissing snakes and distant growling that rules this unbalanced roost.
Jonathan Hogan as Tobias.
Designed by R. Michael Miller, the living room of the home of Agnes and Tobias is well chosen, with a striking cobalt blue black wall and a huge, lightly curtained window that captures the rising sun, and the headlights of the arriving car of Harry and Edna, who have suddenly decided to move in with the surprised couple.
Prior to their arrival, Agnes – brilliantly played by Maureen Anderman – is the picture of grace and civility, sitting in her chair, sipping a brandy, and explaining to her long-silent husband Tobias (Jonathan Hogan) how her perfect world operates. She speaks in long, complex monologues, with more semicolons than periods, and unfailingly returns to her original points, never losing her train of thought. Periodically Tobias offers a non-challenging comment, and she rattles on. “There is chaos behind the civility, of course,” as Albee has noted, and in the case of the lead couple it is a simple case of bed death. They sleep in separate rooms, not because he snores, but because their marriage is more of a mutually beneficial habit than one based on love and enjoyment of each other. Their love of drink seems to have more depth than what they offer for each other.
Joining the couple for cocktails is Agnes’ alcoholic sister Claire, played with carefree abandon by Lisa Emery who constantly throws verbal grenades into the stilted patter between Agnes and Tobias, and with the addition of Julia, the couple’s daughter, the family within the house is complete.
Lisa Emery as Claire.
Before Julia arrives, we meet Harry and Edna (Keir Dullea and Mia DIllon), the best friends of Agnes and Tobias, who drop by unexpectedly to announce that they have developed a fear of their own home and have decided to move in with them. “We’re best friends” seems to be the only explanation needed. And indeed they are, though Albee’s intent is soon clear: their friendship is of the kind that lasts only as long as they can use each other.
When the impossible Julia arrives home, having broken up with her fourth husband, she finds her childhood bedroom taken over by the invading couple, and the minefields are in place for the inevitable unraveling of all the players in Acts II and III. Let the hostilities begin.
Directed by David Auburn, the handsome production proceeds like clockwork – teetering on the brink of perfection – to its conclusion in which the delicate balance so carefully maintained by Agnes is forever altered with the painful departure of Harry and Edna. The inability of any of the characters to act in a simple, human way, underscores Albee’s view of “normal” society as being more concerned with form than content. This was indeed true in the pre-Woodstock days when the regimentation of roles was common. And while there are many clever passages, even witty ones, Albee himself insists he doesn’t write comedy: “I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor,” he says. That is reflected by five of the six characters in the play. With the exception of Claire, they take themselves so goddamned seriously and are unable to step back and laugh at themselves.
Keir Dullea (l) and Mia Dillon.
Of course, other than for the boozy Claire, and perhaps the play-it-safe Tobias, Albee’s characters create unease and would easily drive people away from their selfish, self-justifying world. There is too much booze, too many divorces, too much sense of privilege to make their living room a hospitable place.
Those of us in the audience watching A Delicate Balance might question our own sense of a place in the family dynamic, and how it might be undermined by happenstance. Of course for us mere mortals, it would never happen quite as cleverly or theatrically.
The Berkshire Theatre Festival has done a superb job in bringing Albee’s play back to life, and I for one hope that this might signal their intent to do still more of the author’s work. As America’s reigning king of the living playwrights, we deserve no less.
Berkshire Theatre Festival presents Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, Directed by David Auburn, Scenic Designer – R. Michael Miller, Costume Designer – Wade Laboissonniere, Lighting Designer – Dan Kotlowitz, Resident Composer/Sound Designer – Scott Killian, Stage Manager – Ste[hen Horton. Cast: Agnes – Maureen Anderman, Julia – Mia Barron, Edna – Mia Dillon, Harry – Keir Dullea, Claire – Lisa Emory, Tobias – Jonathan Hogan. Running time about two hours plus two ten minute intermissions. Berkshire Theatre Festival Main Stage, Stockbridge, MA. August 17 – September 4, 2010. www.berkshiretheatre.org
