A Delicate Balance

Delicate Balance, A (1966), a play by Edward Albee. [ Martin Beck Theatre, 132 perf.; Pulitzer Prize.] Sitting in their comfortable library after dinner, Agnes (Jessica Tandy) confides to her husband that she sometimes worries about losing her mind. But her husband, Tobias (Hume Cronyn), assures her he knows no saner woman. In short order the couple are visited by Agnes's younger sister (Rosemary Murphy), a bitter, malicious alcoholic; by the couple's much married daughter (Marian Seldes); and by Tobias's best friend (Henderson Forsythe) and his wife (Carmen Mathews), both of whom are frightened by something they cannot identify. The visits force Agnes and Tobias to reevaluate all their relationships and to recognize that they must maintain a delicate balance between sanity and madness. A curiously elusive play filled with stilted dialogue (“I apologize that my nature is such to bring out in you the full force of your brutality”), it was often more satisfying as an intellectual exercise than as a dramatic theatre piece. But an acclaimed Lincoln Center–produced revival in 1996, directed by Gerald Gutierrez and featuring Rosemary Harris, George Grizzard, and Elaine Stritch, revealed the play to be very funny and inexplicably moving.