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REVIEW: "A Delicate Balance" at Heller Theater
Published: 1/30/2011 9:20 AM
Last Modified: 1/30/2011 9:20 AM

“A Delicate Balance” could serve as a description for just about every one of Edward Albee’s plays.

That is what is needed to navigate Albee’s unique way of blending the natural with the surreal, archly lyrical language with sudden outbursts of brutal emotions and violent actions, moments of deep introspection and broadly obvious humor that never quite shed enough light on the enigma at the core of the play.

All these elements are in “A Delicate Balance,” Albee’s 1966 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about one odd and trying weekend in the home of a very wealthy family.

And Heller Theatre’s production, which opened Friday at the Henthorne PAC, manages to achieve the right sort of equilibrium necessary to make this thorny drama work effectively.

The situation of the play is very simple: Agnes (Ruth Neal) and Tobias (Adrian Alexander) are at home for the weekend, expecting the arrival of their daughter Julia (Georgie Kirby), whose most recent marriage is disintegrating like all the others.

Also at home is Claire (Monica Barczak), Agnes’ sister, whose love of bottled spirits and way of speaking her mind puts her at odds with the very controlling Agnes.

But when the knock on the door comes, it isn’t Julia, but Harry (Michael Massey) and Edna (Susan Webb), who sought out the home of their best friends after experiencing an episode of indescribable terror. Harry and Edna, without much ceremony, immediately install themselves in Julia’s old bedroom – a situation that the already touchy and volatile Julia finds untenable when she ultimately returns to the family manse (well evoked in director Julie Tattershall’s stage design).

At times, “A Delicate Balance” feels like a Harold Pinter play, as characters engage in bloodless yet no less savage battles for control of a given space – a room, usually. But the play is more about the problems created by people’s attempts to control anything, from their innermost emotions to the members of one’s family.

In that sense, this play is really about Tobias, a man who – as a result of a tragic loss years ago – has shut himself off, refusing to face the randomness of the world, the pains that any real connection between two individuals might by chance produce. “Just let it be,” he says again and again. But no one will allow him to let anything be, which leads to a kind of aria-like breakdown.

Alexander does an excellent job with the role, making that evolution from staid burgher to emotional wreck natural and convincing. He handles Albee’s language well, so that his conversation never sounds as mannered – you hear his words as natural speech, not as the façade of words behind which Tobias hides.

Neal, on the other, plays Agnes as all façade. At first it was disconcerting – almost disappointing – at how stylized, how artificial she made the character. But it is a portrayal that becomes more logical and appropriate as the play goes on, as you realize that Agnes – for her own sake and sanity – can never allow others to see how precarious her emotional balance is.

Barczak does a winning job with Monica, loading every sentence with a sly knowingness and dropping the moments of wry comedy with perfect timing. Kirby tempers Julia’s petulance with some very real, very affecting moments of legitimate sorrow, and Massey and Webb are very good as the genial enigmas at the center of it all.

“A Delicate Balance” continues with performances at 2 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Friday and Saturday at the Henthorne PAC, 4825 S. Quaker Ave. Tuesday’s performance is a “Pay What You Can” evening; regular tickets are $10 adults, $7 students. For more information, call 746-5065.



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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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