University of Virginia Library

STAGE

Players Achieve Creditable 'Balance'

By STEVE WELLS

Of all contemporary
American playwrights, Edward
Albee is quite probably the
most challenging-both to
audiences and to the
interpretive theatrical artists
trying to bring his lofty
dramaturgy to life on stage. The
primary reason for this, I
think, is that Albee is a
notoriously self-indulgent
writer; most all of his plays are
literary conceits in one way or
another. He is like the
professor, knowledged in his
field, who gives his students an
examination on material they
haven't been asked to study,
and then glories in flunking
them all because he is
egoistic-though often lonely
and emotionally insecure-atop
his perhaps ill-deserved
pedestal.

I honestly feel that if Albee
stopped playing snobbishly
pretentious games with his
audiences and concentrated
more on examining human
relationships, he could become
one of the great dramatists of
all time. Yet he seems to be
moving in the opposite
direction. Since his
emotionally explosive "Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" in
1963, he has written two other
domestic dramas, the most
recent of which ("All Over"
last spring) proved to be one of
the most static and
one-dimensional soporifics ever
to come from the pen of a
"major" playwright.

Between these two
extremes, however, Albee
wrote what might, in relation
to his development as a
dramatist, be termed a
compromise piece. "A Delicate
Balance," a competent
production of which the
Virginia Players opened on
Monday evening in Minor Hall,
has an emotional drive that is
paradoxically complemented
and restrained by an intense
moral and psychological
probing.

Man's Obligation

The theme of the play,
which was awarded the Pulitzer
Prize in 1966-67 (though most
felt that the award was a
compensation for the Pulitzer
he was denied for "Virginia
Woolf"), is the extent of man's
obligation to his neighbor.
What are the limits of
friendship? Are we our
brother's keeper? Our friends'?

Agnes and Tobias are an
affluent, well-mannered,
conservative couple, not happy
in their marriage but resigned,
with whom live Agnes'
wisecracking, alcoholic sister,
Claire. With their daughter,
Julia, on her way home after
her fourth marriage has gone
on the rocks, their best friends,
Edna and Harry, are frightened
out of their own home by an
obscure terror (a typical Albee
convention) and come to live
with Agnes and Tobias. The
question, as Claire
straightforwardly puts it, is
simply whether to "take 'em
in" or "throw 'em out."

Mease, Black, Slafkosky: Confronting Guilt-Ridden Inadequacies

The play has a bothersome
tendency to verbosely meander
here and there, but this again is
Albee's self-indulgence, which
can, I think, be overlooked in
this case due to the many
virtues which this drama
possesses. The playwright's
strength is in depicting human
torment, making his characters
confront their guilt-ridden
inadequacies; the human
compassion he evokes when
Claire relates her experience
with Alcoholics Anonymous or
Tobias recollects his boyhood
relationship with his cat who
stopped liking him for no
reason is amazingly deep,
amazingly painful, and yes,
amazingly real.

Photo By Andy Stickney

Less Pretentious

Even though "A Delicate
Balance" is one of Albee's
better, less pretentious plays, it
still requires much thought and
careful interpretation. There is
an elevated and often poetic
quality to his dialogue which
creates certain pitfalls for
actors. The one serious flaw in
the Players' production, which
Arthur Greene has staged, is
that sometimes the actors fail
to make their lines sound
spontaneous; they recite
dramatically, but in so doing
negate the reality of the
character who is speaking. In
other words, there is
sometimes too much emphasis
on how something is said and
too little on what is being said.

This, however, is an
occasional and certainly not
pervasive failing. It is most
evident in Barbara Slafkosky's
otherwise capable portrayal of
Agnes. Although she looks too
young for the part, Miss
Slafkosky has all the
matriarchal stateliness and
dignity that one would expect
of a woman of Agnes' station.

There are two perfectly
calculated performances on
display here, and director
Greene deserves credit for
eliciting them from Ellen
Mease and George Black. Miss
Mease's bravura playing of
Claire reinforces her status as
the finest dramatic actress in
the area. She strikes just the
right balance of cynicism,
protective humor, and
feminine omniscience that the
role calls for. Her Claire is a
desperate woman drowning her
insecurities in alcohol; funny
one minute, tragic the next,
and always fascinating.

Come To Terms

Mr. Black's triumph is of a
quieter, though no less
emphatic, nature. As Tobia
he shows us a man, weak-willed
and dominated, who has been
forced to come to terms with
his conscience, a conscience
which has difficulty justifying
past acts and present emotions.
Mr. Black is particularly
moving as he searches for the
truth regarding Tobias'
relationships with others the
cat, Claire, Agnes, Harry - and
only in his final third act aria
does he fall a bit short of
getting everything out of the
part that Albee put into it. A
very fine piece of acting.

Of the others, Sally Booker
makes her emotional hysteria
as Julia quite believable. Paula
Johnson succeeds in making
Edna a snotty, presumptuous,
nouveau riche type while
Robert McLaughlin is
acceptable though seemingly
uncomfortable and, once or
twice, awkward as Harry.

One other slightly
incongruous note to the
evening is the setting which
David Gwin has designed. It's
attractive, but it just doesn't
have the grandeur that Agnes
and Tobias' home should have.

But no matter, for there is
some good acting and good
drama here. At last the Virginia
Players have given us a serious
American play and have done
what can be considered a
respectable job with it.

—Ed.)