Edward Albee “A Delicate Balance”

Edward Albee “A Delicate Balance”

Edward Albee “A Delicate Balance”

Introduction

What are we to make of this strange and beautiful story, as mysterious as a carnivorous plant in a hospital room? What can we say about the brightly-colored inhabitants of this hothouse world, who squawk like macaws against the pretensions which inhibit them? Only this: that Albee, abetted by Director Pam MacKinnon and Arena's production, has forced us to stare at the truth again. We should be grateful.

Analysis

Let us consider, then, the bare bones of the story. Agnes (Kathleen Chalfant) and Tobias (Terry Beaver) live in a grand home with Agnes' drunk sister Claire (Ellen McLaughlin). The living room - the focal point of Todd Rosenthal's exquisite set - features an Everest of bookshelves, each of them loaded with literary tomes, and a cabinet full of top-shelf liquors. Agnes and Tobias are awaiting the arrival of their daughter Julia (Carla Harting), who has become an expert in failed marriages - she is only 36, and is leaving her fourth husband (Ann White, 2009).

Suddenly, and without explanation, Tobias' best friend Harry (James Slaughter) and his wife Edna (Helen Hedman) arrive. They are frightened - of something - and cannot stand to be alone in their own homes. Only in Tobias' household can they be safe. The play proceeds apace. Harry and Edna, having shaken off the malaise that haunted them, put on their jolly faces, and set to the serious business of depleting the liquor cabinet. Julia arrives, and rages against the presence of the interlopers. Indeed she tolerates Claire's presence only thinly. There is harsh language, slapping, gunplay, and, afterward, dinner, prepared by the servants (Tad Simons, 2009).

Not with standing what you may have heard about this play, it is not about Claire's boozing but about Tobias' dilemma, which can be formulated thus: What the hell are all those people doing in his house? Tobias, in Beaver's towering portrayal, is a good man, or at least a good enough man: patient, tolerant, flexible, and generous of spirit. He placates his bitter, brittle, aphoristic (best one: “men work to make ends meet, until they meet the end”) wife, who hates her sister (Nicholas de Jongh, 1997). He placates the sister, a mean drunk (she once went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, assumed the podium, announced in a little-girl voice that “I am a alcoholic” and curtsied, ...