A DELICATE BALANCE, Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning masterwork returns to Broadway with an extraordinary cast.
In A DELICATE BALANCE, Agnes (Glenn Close) and Tobias (John Lithgow), a long-married couple, must maintain their equilibrium as over the course of a weekend they welcome home their 36-year-old daughter (Martha Plimpton) after the collapse of her fourth marriage, and give shelter to their best friends (Bob Balaban and Clare Higgins), all the while tolerating Agnes' alcoholic sister Claire (Lindsay Duncan).
The Daily News calls A DELICATE BALANCE "a beautiful play- easily Albee's best and most mature, filled with humor and compassion and touched with poetry." It "proves that old-fashioned stage virtues- originality of voice, depth of feeling, richness of language- can still provide a thrill" (TIME Magazine). "If you really care about serious theatre, brilliant theatre, great acting, and great playwriting, this is the only play to see on Broadway" (New York Post).
Albee's title applies to virtually any scenario. But Agnes and Toby are keenly concerned with the delicate balance of keeping reality -- or anything, or anyone, unpleasant -- outside their front door...Agnes is tightly wrapped, in terms of both manner and costume, which smartly underscores the sense of insularity. Close, with her aristocratic take on Agnes, comes within inches of coming off as arch. That approach doesn't hurt the character. But Close's unintentional habit of tripping over Albee's dialogue doesn't help. Lithgow, meantime, is riveting every moment he's on stage -- which is a lot -- even when Tobias is silent. As he takes the character from quiet restraint to explosive urgency, he doesn't miss a beat and never for a second loses his equilibrium. His is a delicate -- and distinctive -- balance.
Albee's 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winner, which takes an upper class, suburban WASP family to the breaking point over a weekend, is superbly directed by Pam MacKinnon and so well performed by a trans-Atlantic ensemble that each actor manages to convince you that they are the focus of the show...Albee has clearly found a soul mate in the examination of how life gets compromised and calcified. MacKinnon has an equally blistering cast this time, with Lithgow as a terribly good ineffective peacemaker, trying to avoid verbal land mines, counseling 'let it be,' and constantly fetching drinks. His story about an old house cat becomes an aria and his eventual collapse into a barking puddle of honesty is gorgeous. Close's Agnes perfectly navigates the role's twin dangers of barking self-righteousness, on the one hand, and nasty bitchiness on the other. She's able to switch from soft and loving to arch and noble to pounce like an alley cat.
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