Theatre in Review: A Delicate Balance (Transport Group/NAATCO at Connelly Theatre)

	Carmen M. Herlihy, Many Narayan. Photo: Carol Rosegg

The bar is open at the Connelly Theatre, where the suburbanites of Edward Albee's 1967 drama are once again clinking glasses and shredding each other to bits. Unlike the white-hot marital combatants in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the members of this well-oiled crowd mostly keep their composure, preferring to convey their most poisonous thoughts in carefully constructed paragraphs. Erudite, articulate, and nicely dressed, the people of A Delicate Balance are the most well-mannered monsters you've ever met.

For example: Agnes, this menage's oracular queen bee, idly wonders what would happen if she suddenly became "mad as a hatter, chewing on the ribbons on her dress." Her husband, Tobias, quoting her, genially says he would "put you in a bin somewhere, sell the house, and move to Tucson." Claire, Agnes's troublemaking sister, on her third (or fourth; who's counting?) brandy, insists that unlike other members of "the alkie club," she is merely a "willful" drinker; she'll have another, thanks, if only to get on Agnes' nerves. Waving her idea of an olive branch at Agnes, she says, "I apologize that my nature is such to bring out in you the full nature of your brutality."

Passing the time, Claire and Tobias amuse themselves with fantasies of him murdering the entire household. "Leave me till last," Claire requests. "A breeze might rise and stir the ashes." Meanwhile, Julia, thirty-six-year-old daughter of Agnes and Tobias, arrives, fleeing the wreckage of her fourth marriage; instead of being grateful for the refuge, she characterizes Tobias to his face as a "very nice but ineffectual, essential, but not-really-thought of, gray...non-eminence." After all that, what else to do but grab a pitcher and hand out another round of martinis?

Like Virginia Woolf, the action of A Delicate Balance is a long night's journey into day, a cocktail hour that stretches from dusk until dawn, when it's time for a few slugs of whiskey before breakfast. It's a tricky play -- naturalistic on the surface but filled with echoes of a spiritual dissolution that isn't easily pinned down. The flowing spirits and chilly infighting are signals that a formal, monied way of life -- drinks, dinner, dances at the club -- has been drained of anything like energy, affection, delight, leaving a surface iced over with rancor.

Albee then stirs the pot with the introduction of Harry and Edna, Tobias and Agnes' dear friends, suddenly overwhelmed by a nameless terror that has made it impossible to remain at home. To Julia's vocal distress, they quickly commandeer her bedroom, making themselves comfortable. In a short time, they are poised to take over, detailing Julia's shortcomings while Agnes and Tobias try to figure out their next move. Are Harry and Edna here to stay? Can this household absorb them? Is their panic contagious?

For me, any production of A Delicate Balance will inevitably dwell in the shadow of Gerald Gutierrez's 1996 staging, starring the unbeatable trio of George Grizzard, Rosemary Harris, and Elaine Stritch as Tobias, Agnes, and Claire. Still, Jack Cummings III's staging, a co-production of Transport Group and National Asian American Theatre Company, has a definite double-vodka kick, if you can accept a couple of major missteps. One involves Peiyi Wong's set design, a raised stage that bisects the auditorium with seating on both sides, which suffers from sightline problems. The designer frames the well-appointed main playing area with facing leather sofas; fair enough, but Cummings often has the actors seated side by side, blocking each other out. During the first scene, Mia Katigbak, as Agnes, all but disappears into the couch at the moment when she should dominate the stage.

Indeed, the accomplished Katigbak doesn't quite connect with the role of Agnes; she's about halfway there, having captured the character's oddball gift for rumination and muted sorrow, but not her more acid qualities and bleak sense of humor. Instead of presiding over the action -- keeping score and fighting back with unnerving calm -- she lacks a certain relish for emotional mayhem. This dilutes the tension between Agnes and the Claire of Carmen M. Herlihy. The latter, previously a specialist in shrinking violets, offers a sharply stylized characterization -- boozing it up, scraping the air with discordant notes from her accordion, and, planting herself on the floor, wondering, in her best Connecticut lockjaw, why Agnes doesn't do them all a favor and die. It's striking work, but she would be even better with an Agnes to strike sparks against.

This imbalance throws the spotlight on Manu Narayan, whose quietly imploding Tobias rouses himself splendidly for two highly effective set pieces. In the first, Tobias recalls the pet cat whose affection he lost, rousing him to such a fury that he had the animal euthanized with malice aforethought. Later, faced with the prospect of Harry and Edna's departure, his bemusement is converted into a sudden, stabbing sense of loss; driven over the edge by one derangement too many, he vents his rage, simultaneously begging and demanding that Harry change his mind. It's a startlingly accomplished performance from an actor best-known for his work in musical theatre.

Tina Chilip, brittle and metallic as Julia, a grown woman reduced to tears of the loss of her bedroom, forcefully rattles off her lengthy list of grievances. Rita Wolf's Edna switches on a dime from high anxiety to cool, poised contempt; it would be interesting to see her as Agnes. Harry is a thankless role, a gray little man turning grayer by the minute, but Paul Juhn is solid enough.

Everyone is dressed splendidly in '60s suburban chic by Mariko Ohigashi, who doesn't miss a detail in delineating each character. R. Lee Kennedy's lighting evolves by degrees into the bleakest sunrise you've ever seen. No sound designer is credited; given the Connelly's noisy air-delivery system, a slight audio boost would have been welcome.

If this isn't the definitive version of A Delicate Balance -- the latest entry in New York's current informal festival of Pulitzer Prize winners -- it is a solid introduction to an oblique masterpiece. Whether you take it as a savage critique of American life or a Pinteresque report from a blasted psychological war zone, it continues to exert a reptilian fascination. Cocktail time! --David Barbour