A Delicate Balance

WOBBLING TO IMBALANCE

Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance is ostensibly about boundaries among family and friends—when intrusion violates the sanctity of privacy. For symmetry, he throws in unidentified fear—spreading as if a social disease. With often wandering dialogue, coming with strict acting instructions about which the author demands adherence, his inchoateness on the need for a balance in relationships is barely penetrable, neglecting to inform why we should give a damn. Exploring angst later personally denied, he’s probably delving into the inner affects over not feeling loved, validated or worthy, some of this experienced as a youth from his adoptive parents represented by Katharine Hepburn’s Agnes and Paul Scofield’s Tobias. (Their son’s dead before the play starts, replaced by a daughter/sister.) Something else is off too: If accepted that the play is meant to be serious, and initially played as such on Broadway and in this American Film Theatre version, the only possibilities for audience tolerance are guessing what’s going on, a regularly irritating Albee device, or, happening quite often in tandem, watching good actors working their asses off to make sense of his wobblers’ disjointedness. Preferring the term “translating” to screen over “adapting,” which might mean he’s trying to stay within the communal experience of theatre to reduce the intrinsic power of movies exposing dramatic chicanery, Albee’s “truth digs” are negated by closeups allowing surfeit interpretation. His infamy in refusing to issue character clarifications, that the actors themselves must find their own way, not only compound viewer alienation but with director Tony Richardson and photographer David Watkins compliant in efforts to turn a real London house into a substitute theatre, this clumsily blocked presentation of Albee crabbiness seems to want to escape its confines to West End comedy. When Betsy Blair’s Edna and Joseph Cotten’s Harry as husband barge in on Agnes and Tobias seeking shelter from a flare-up of whatever, Blair turns into a venomous Lady-in-Waiting-for-Something sounding like Pamela Brown as she slaps the last arriving refugee—Lee Remick, the four marriage loser Julia, daughter of Agnes & Tobias, who hysterically demands, with gun in hand, her bedroom back from the usurpers. As this affront occurs, Hepburn, Scofield, Cotten and Kate Reid as Claire, Agnes’s sister as resident leech, just stand there without intervening; the expectation for a juicy retaliation over violation of trespass fails to land a counter punch. This constipated assault does beg to be farce: since there are a few cues, we want to laugh yet dare not as Albee’s sneers and clogs get in the way. (Years would pass before he would direct to high praise a comedic Correctol to free the play’s jam ups.)

With Richardson guiding the “seriousness” about the discernment of the “whatever” culprits triggering invasions of privacy and insecurities over relationships, he forlornly accedes to Albee’s fledgling conflictions and confusions by depending on the commanding speaking voice of Scofield to clarify them. In climatic bantering with Cotten, though, he feigns empathy over Cotten’s sudden and acute anxiety, rather like an Indian giver, granting safe harbor with every likelihood of taking it back. And Cotten plays with such dicey dignity that we can’t be sure if he’s aware of the inherent acidic hilarity in the otherwise generous host’s retaliative threat. (In comedy versions the two earn their laughs.) In Margaret Furse-designed Dalmatian or cheetah-spotted caftan hoisting up an extravagant turtle neck cover, or in the classiest brown & black kimono with sleeves banded by a watch on each wrist—this peculiarity spotted during the beginning credits—Hepburn risks releasing the playwright’s gas in a sphere of poetic farting while sneaking her customary glances at the camera and using the old trick of laughing as she’s chattering, only to sink into a dignified malaise of bafflement. (She admitted never understanding what Albee was writing about, a concern shared by Vivien Leigh who, just before her death, was scheduled to do the play in England.) Looking terrific in her Charlie’s Angels hair, Remick is just about as 70s shallow; amusing, even a bit embarrassing as she recalls Patty Duke’s Neely without mascara as naughty adult child screeching away at Hepburn & Scofield in the solarium and Blair & Cotten in the living room. Taking over from Kim Stanley who suffered a memory-loss-of-lines situation during rehearsals which impatient Hepburn found intolerable, Reid’s Claire nearly gloats in a case of the boozed uglies; only a few days notice to prepare for actual filming, she’s beyond being merely adequate, albeit caught in the same quandary of apathy audiences feel for the other engraved. (Except for the lucky audiences in London who would see an acclaimed affaire d’honneur of edge supremacy etched by Maggie Smith as Claire and Eileen Atkins as Agnes.)

Opening on Broadway in 1966, the play was thrashed by influential 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 could be doing to be honored and missing in Remick. The most mileage Albee gained from the play wasn’t in receiving his first Pulitzer prize—bestowed less for merit than consolation for a previous decision by Columbia University trustees vetoing the judges granting the award to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?—but in rejecting it. While enjoying his public vitriol, many of us believe Albee knew A Delicate Balance didn’t deserve any prizes for writing.

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