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A Delicate Balance

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To date, Edward Albee has won three Pulitzer prizes, has written one of the most famous plays ever--WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (surprisingly not among the three)--and also has written the most famous one-act ever, THE ZOO STORY. A DELICATE BALANCE is one of the Pulitzer winners; anyone who cares about theatre will love this. In performance an electrifying evening, it is also a darn good read--again and again. A tragedy at times hilarious, the stylized piece is an examination of friendship contrasted with family, in which the playwright creates six delicous characters--roles actors especially love and often perform brilliantly. Katherine Hepburn's filmed version comes to mind--a near perfect expression of the matriarch Agnes, who has several problems: her alcoholic sister is drinking in the living room, her daughter is coming home after a failed 4th marriage, and her friends Edna and Harry have decided to move in because they are "afraid" of something. Agnes's husband Tobias is polite, detached, and reasonable. Against bristling tension, the author uses drunken Claire as comic counterpoint to brilliant effect, giving her an accordion (of all things) as prop with which to accent and poke fun. (There's a wonderful sight gag near the end where this character, who isn't supposed to have one drink, is discovered holding two.) We also smile when mousy Edna tries to re-decorate Agnes's home and speaks to the divorcing Julia as if she were her own daughter. (How easily shyness moves to assertiveness, then imperceptibly to cruelty.) So we laugh to keep from crying--but laugh we do! And although Agnes is unforgettable, nevertheless it is Tobias who gets the climactic "aria," an attempt to put his house in order. The dramatist calls our bluff on what we mean by "friends," fusing big ideas in three elegant acts, crystallizing mysterious beauty from carefully chosen words. The result is a theatrical touchstone, one of Edward Albee's many masterpieces, a magnificent gem of a play.

Albee, the playwright who invented one of the more complicated and vivid relationships ever in a play in ZOO STORY, has again demonstrated his intimate knowledge of the deeper motives behind human interaction. Every interaction between characters in this play -- from long monologues to short snippets of conversation -- has behind it some manner of conflict.

Everybody in this play needs change, and can only reach it through the destruction of others; Tobias and Agnes who simply want to be left alone, but whose house has been invaded; Julia, the daughter who is betrayed by the fact that her parents gave away her room; Claire, who wants only to excercise her right to a good time; Edna and Harry who aren't quite sure what they need, and subsequently frustrate everyone else.

This is a very heavy play, but written in a such a way that is has the guise of being a comedy. A must-read for anybody that loves drama.

Agnes open the play with a monologue in which she contemplates the possibility that one day, unexpectedly, she might turn mad. She says she contemplates it with astonishment, but she does not sound very astonished at all, she is more... fashinated by the idea. Her husband is listening, but not listening at all as if he could not hear Agnes, or her talking about the possibility of becoming mad was perfectly normal, or she has been mad a long time and he discounts her.
I won't spoil the play, but (for me) it is an interesting investigation in what it means to be mad. Indeed it is not clear who is mad, probably all of them, possibly none. The bounderies of madness are not clearly drawn and characters seem to shift in and out of it on a continuous basis. Rules of the polite society are called into question. Is it mad to break them or to upkeep them?

The play is enjoyable to read, but not overly so, it is above everything else, enjoyable to think about.

I am writing ANOTHER review because I CANNOT EXPRESS to you how wonderful this play is. I just read it for the second time. It is one of the three best plays I have every read in my life, and believe me, I have read all the plays worth reading. This is almost as good as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Once again, I love love love love love this play and all the characters. There is a movie. Don't see it. The play is better. Read the play. There are many great moments: Tobias' "cat speech," Tobias' memorable four-page closing speech, all of Act Two Scene Two, all of Act Three, Claire's disturbing interpretation of what it's like to be an alcoholic...they go on and on. This is my theory of what the play is about essentially: this is the story of a family who does nothing all day but sit and drink and b*tch about how terrible their lives are. They have lots of money. They have good friends and a good family. But they have let their lives go to waste. They've let life pass them by. Now they are old and sit back and realize how much they've missed. But not before much turmoil and anger are let out. There are a husband and wife in the play who sleep in separate beds, until one night, for lack of room, they are forced to sleep together and they realize: THEY LIKE IT. But they have wasted years and years of sleeping in separate beds. Am I rambling like a lunatic? Sorry. Just read it please or else I have typed all of this for no reason at all.

Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance" is certainly a strange and fascinating play. Like most of Albee's plays, it only has a limited number of characters (six), much booze, crumbling marriages and long nights filled with hurtful remarks. A complicated and compelling story of an aging couple, the wife's brash sister, the couple's dissatisfied daughter, and two friends who drop in unexpectedly one night. Worth a look.

I liked reading it, funny interesting play. Can't wait to see it live on nov 6

Purchases book for my daugther's AP Literature class. Loved the quickness of the delivery. I am always satisfied with Amazon.

Edward Albee is best-known for his play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a Broadway classic that was made into a film starring a young Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. However, this play, A Delicate Balance, is my favorite out of Albee's plays, and I've read nearly all of them. It won Albee the first of his 3 Pulitzer Prizes, and was made into a film starring Katherine Hepburn.

The story focuses on an aging WASP couple, Agnes and Tobias. Agnes' alcoholic sister, Claire, lives with the couple. Then events, or rather people, intrude into this carefully ordered household. First, two old friends, Harry and Edna, arrive without warning and ask to stay for an indeterminate time. Then Julia, the daughter of Agnes and Tobias, also asks for refuge. Cracks form in the veneer of control and peace that Agnes has cultivated. The character of Claire (a delightful drunk if there ever was one) steals the show as she alternately mocks the situation and tries to help the people involved.

As in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the characters occupy intensely charged domestic landscapes, inner spaces of anxiety and dread, and the climaxes of both plays are punctuated by speeches from the main characters. These monologues roll out with a cathartic force equivalent to operatic arias. True to its title, though, the play as a whole feels restrained and delicate, its turmoil gurgling underneath.

Since Albee is a playwright who is extremely sensitive to the musical, rhythmic aspect of drama, his plays can unfold in a reader's mind as easily, and perhaps more perfectly than if they were realized on a stage. Albee himself has compared playwrights' scripts to musical scores. Like a musician who can read music and then "hear" it in his mind, those readers who are comfortable reading dramatic dialogue and stage directions can easily experience A Delicate Balance in the privacy of their rooms.

"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" will be the play that is revived again and again over years, like Hellman's "Little Foxes," because middle-aged stars will be asked what they'd like to do and, inevitably, this is the play of choice, but like Hellman's lesser-known "Another Part of the Forest," this play by Albee is his best. It is less flashy, less loud, less dramatic, but it is deeper and more moving. It 'plays' to the women in the audience, I suppose, because Agnes is more interesting of the characters, more so than Tobias. The Harry and Edna characters are mere shadows of the lead couple, in fact one can see them as alter-egos of the two leads, their lesser or better halves, depending on how one sees it. Anyway, Harry and Edna come to visit one night and then want to stay. Their intrusion or invasion, if you like, sets the house afire, and Albee has a field day working out what in the end is a reasonably challenging moral dilemma: let them stay or throw them out? Of course, there are cultures for which this would not be such a crisis, but for WASPS issues of 'sharing' and of 'giving' get to the heart of what love is, and Albee suggests these people might not have any love to give.

This is the first of Edward Albee's plays to garner the Pulitzer Prize in 1967. The other two were Seascape and Three Tall Women. Probably his most popular is Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

A Delicate Balance is comprised of brilliant dialogue, mostly short snippets, and some very meaningful longer dialogue. It is dialogue that offers sarcastic humor and provides a continuity of mystery that provokes thought. There are not excessive stage directions or character descriptions, it is all in the dialogue.

To view this onstage would take a great stage direction and better castmembers who can pull it off with intense theatrical skill as Albee intended.

Tobias and Agnes are a well-to-do middle-age couple's questionable balance in life is disrupted when "hangers on" invade their space. At home is Agnes' alcoholic, witty younger sister Claire (mid 30's) and their four times married daughter Julia is coming back home, routinely. Harry and Edna, dear friends of Tobias and Agnes come to stay because they are fearful and we are kept wondering what has them so scared that they need to leave their own home.

Things get heated when Julia arrives, again, and Harry and Edna take up her room and she retaliates furiously, openly and child-like. We learn that Tobias had an affair, they had a son who died young, and they have not slept together for years.

This is a great play that focuses on the truth and illusion in marriage, a popular theme of Albee's. The first performance in New York Sept. 1966 starred Hume Cronyn and his wife, Jessica Tandy, two of the best in theatre. That would have been a great performance. .....Rizzo