The Walnut Street Theatre presents Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance

Upsetting the balance

For years, retired businessman Tobias (Paul L. Nolan) and housewife Agnes (Alicia Roper) have maintained a kind of detente in their large, upper-middle-class household. They appear honest with one another while avoiding certain unpleasant truths, including the death of their young son and Tobias's adultery. However, several events interrupt this truce. This includes Agnes's sister Claire (Grace Gonglewski), an alcoholic who clashes with Agnes's dictatorial perfection; daughter Julia (Alanna J. Smith) separating from her fourth husband; and in an absurd turn, best friends Harry (Peter Schmitz) and Edna (Wendy Scharfman) asking if they can move in. Why? Harry tries to explain what it's like in their house: “It was like being lost: very young again, with the dark, and lost. There was no...thing...to be...frightened of, but...we were frightened...And there was nothing.”

This development infuriates the entitled, immature Julia, who returns home and insists that her room cannot be occupied. But Tobias and Agnes insist that their friends need them and they can't just force them out of the house. Soon, these conflicts, all taking place in the living room and with heavy bouts of drinking at play, bring Tobias and Agnes's marriage to a darker place than either ever expected.

The formula of American drama

A Delicate Balance, what with the small upper-class bourgeois ensemble drinking and sniping at each other, feels out of step with the current moment. This is the kind of play that thrived in the 1960s and

’70s, but it has become archaic, a time capsule of an era where there was greater upward mobility and contemporary fiction was hyper-concerned about the problems of the white middle class. But by now, the monologues and the somewhat hopeful dialogue delivered before curtain call have become theatrical cliché. This is not exactly Albee's fault. An innovative writer, his originality accidentally created formulas American drama easily thrived on. Regardless, once you have seen or read August: Osage County, Long Day's Journey into Night, or any number of dysfunctional family plays, it's easy to see how the plot will develop.

The most interesting aspect is Harry and Edna's insistence that they would like to move in with Tobias and Agnes, a development that is genuinely funny and strange. The event draws out the question of whether Tobias and Agnes even like Harry and Edna or are merely used to them. It also gives Nolan as Tobias a standout monologue near the end, the unraveling of an entire psyche when he begs them to stay. There's a reason that Albee was part of the Theater of the Absurd, though one suspects Pinter or Ionesco would have taken the plot to much stranger places.

Stuck in 1965

If you're in the mood for the kind of production this promises, with minimal set design from Roman Tatarowicz, and Ryan O'Gara's lighting drawing as little attention as possible away from the meaty dialogue, A Delicate Balance is the right theatrical outing. Nolan is excellent and Roper’s Agnes is infuriating and heartbreaking. But if you want a less predictable night at the theater, one that speaks to current anxieties and focuses on drama over Writing with a capital W, this won't satisfy. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf has endured the ravages of time, but A Delicate Balance belongs firmly to 1965. Whether you want to go back there too is up to you.

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