A Delicate Balance

WOBBLING TO IMBALANCE

Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance is ostensibly about boundaries among family and friends—when not to violate the sanctity of privacy. For dramatic symmetry, he throws in cryptic fear—spreading as if a plague. Situationally it might work—six intelligent adults in one house inoculated with savvy interplay, armed with brass knuckles. Yet with often meandering dialogue coming with strict acting instructions about which the author demanded adherence, thus throwing out spontaneity and balance, his inchoateness oozes through and solidifies, unable to explain why we should care. Exploring assumed angst, he’s trying to delve into the inner terror of not feeling loved, validated or worthy, which he experienced as a youth from his parents, represented by Katharine Hepburn’s Agnes and Paul Scofield’s Tobias. But their son’s dead before the play starts, replaced by a sister. Something else is off too—tone. If accepted the play is meant to be serious, and initially played as such on Broadway as well as in this American Film Theatre version, the only possibility of surviving is for the audience to guess something more is going on, a regular if irritating Albee device, or, as it happened, go to watch good actors working their asses off to make this wobbler a satisfactory viewing. Adapted by Albee, with Tony Richardson directing and David Watkins photographing in London, this presentation is so clumsily structured its sole chance to survive would be to perform it as a West End comedy. When Betsy Blair’s Edna and Joseph Cotton’s Harry as husband barge in on Agnes and Tobias seeking shelter from a flare-up of whatever, Blair becomes a venomous Lady-in-Waiting-for-Something who slaps another refugee—Lee Remick’s multi-married loser Julia, daughter of Agnes & Tobias—and as this affront occurs Hepburn, Scofield, Cotten and Kate Reid as Claire, Agnes’s sister as resident leech, just stand there without intervening, as if waiting for the juicer retaliation. The assault begs to be farce but, wanting to, we’re not laughing; Albee’s sneering, snobby contempt gets in the way. (At some later point he corrected the deficiencies and would direct a comedy version to high acclaim.) With Richardson guiding the “seriousness” without his own discernment of the whatever triggering the invasion of privacy, he allows Scofield to be conflicted, confused and confusing; commanding as his voice tries to be in the climatic bantering with Cotten, Scofield can’t cut through the bullshit to respond to the key revelation of Cotton’s need for and reciprocity of safe harbor. And Cotton plays with such dicey dignity we can’t figure out if he’s emoting truthfully or dropping a snide retaliatory bomb meant to be shocking, acidic hilarity. (The latter gets laughs in sanctioned comedy revivals.) In Margret Furse-designed Dalmatian or cheetah-spotted caftan and the classiest brown & black kimono, and might be wearing a watch on each wrist, Hepburn risks releasing the playwright’s gas to a sphere of poetic farting while sneaking her customary glances at the camera and using her old trick of laughing as she’s talking, only to sink in a malaise of insecurity. (She admitted never understanding what Albee was writing about, a concern shared by Vivien Leigh who, before her death, was scheduled to do the play in England, and Eileen Atkins on the London stage used her renowned weapon of “edge” to tackle both the part and her dueling with Maggie Smith.) Looking terrific in her Charlie’s Angels hair, Remick is just about as 70s shallow yet she’s amusing if a bit embarrassing: at times as she reminds us of Patty Duke’s Neely without mascara as naughty adult child crabbing away at Hepburn and Scofield in the solarium. Reid, taking over from Kim Stanley (having had a mental breakdown during rehearsals), also suffers—from a case of the boozed uglies, the nightmare Sara Gilbert might one day face in the mirror, but she’s more than adequate. When the play first opened on Broadway, it got bruised by many critics including Walter Kerr in the N.Y. Times and Robert Brustein in The Third Theatre; while winning a handful of Tony award nominations, including best play, only Marian Seldes won as best featured actress playing Julia, making us wonder what she was doing to be so awarded and missing in Remick. The biggest honor for Albee was receiving his first Pulitzer prize, by most accounts bestowed less for merit than consolation for a previous decision not to grant the award for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? due to its language.

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ralphbenner@nowreviewing.com