Manu Narayan (left) and Mia Katigbak are Tobias and Agnes, a married couple who face unknowable terrors in Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance.
Edward Albee’s 1966 Pulitzer Prize–winning A Delicate Balance begins in the evening and ends in the morning. Hidden terrors emerge and then suddenly disappear in a drama that could be titled Long Night’s Journey into Day. As one character says, “Darkness still frightens us,” and “when the daylight comes again . . . comes order with it.” In Jack Cummings III’s slyly off-kilter production, presented in partnership with Transport Group and the National Asian American Theatre Company, the play begins in total light and ends in complete darkness. The terrors do not dissipate at dawn but linger into a new day.
The lighting, stunningly designed by R. Lee Kennedy, isn’t the only element that will offer a new perspective for audiences familiar with the play. Peiyi Wong’s set design captures the patrician fustiness of the library/living room of a large suburban home, but this parlor gives the impression of a genteel island floating in the middle of the auditorium. The audience sits on two sides as if in an operating theater, and the bottom of the stage is lined with rows of books meticulously shelved around the perimeter. In addition, there are hundreds of cocktail, highball, martini, and snifter glasses perilously arranged underneath. On one side of the stage is a well-appointed bar and on the opposite is an incongruous and foreboding staircase that appears to ascend into the unknown.
Narayan with Carmen M. Herlihy as Claire, the “willful drunk,” in a revival of a play that premiered in 1966.
The house belongs to Tobias (Manu Narayan) and Agnes (Mia Katigbak), a well-to-do married couple in their sixties. As the play begins, Tobias is preparing drinks, and Agnes icily contemplates a future in which she “very easily” might “lose my mind one day.” Agnes’s sister Claire (Carmen M. Herlihy) lives there as well, and her sole purpose in life, aside from drinking nonstop, seems to be as a constant source of vexation to Agnes. As Claire drily explains to her older sister, “I apologize that my nature is such to bring out in you the full force of your brutality.”
The drinking and restrained sniping are interrupted by the visit of old friends Harry (Paul Juhn) and Edna (Rita Wolf), who have abandoned their home because they were suddenly and inexplicably frightened. They do not know what has insidiously disturbed their peace, but they cannot go back. Causing further disruption to Tobias and Agnes’s ordered lives is the return of their daughter, Julia (Tina Chilip), who is going through yet another divorce. Her fourth, according to the latest scorecard.
Narayan is suitably reserved and emotionally constrained as Tobias, and he even moves gingerly as if not to upset the precarious calm in his home. His explosive outburst near the end of the play is, as a result, especially alarming in exposing the existential fears and aching desperation he has spent a lifetime suppressing. Katigbak is similarly composed as Agnes, and she spends a good deal of the play expressing measured disdain, allowing her maternal warmth to shine through only periodically.
Actresses since 1996 have had to deal with the formidable spirit of Elaine Stritch, who one might argue was born to play the part of Claire. (Or was Claire born to have Stritch play her?) Unfortunately, Herlihy does not stake a claim to the role. Rather than acerbic, instigating, and prescient, Herlihy’s Claire is more of a spoiled and bratty little sister rather than a stealth threat living under the same roof. In the thankless role of Julia, who is prone to temper tantrums, Chilip is convincing as a grown woman in need of more parenting.
Tina Chilip as Julia in a rare moment of calm with Herlihy. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
Juhn is very good as Harry, gradually and craftily revealing the limits of his friendship with Tobias, but the revelation of this Delicate Balance is Wolf. Entering in a Dior suit (Mariko Ohigashi designed the spot-on costumes), she is visibly shaken and terrified. As Edna becomes more and more comfortable in her new surroundings, she conveys almost diabolical power. At one point, she hauls off and slaps Julia (because it is, she says, “a godmother’s duty”), and she seems to have usurped control of the house from Tobias and Agnes. It’s fascinating to watch as Wolf’s Edna fiendishly casts her roaming eyes on her new and glorious conquest.
At the end of the play, the friends do leave. In Cummings’s version, though, they do not take their metaphysical scourges with them along with their repacked bags. No, they leave those behind.
Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, presented by Transport Group and NAATCO, plays through Nov. 19 at the Connelly Theater (220 E. 4h St.). For tickets, COVID guidelines, and performance schedule, visit http://transportgroup.org/project/a-delicate-balance/.
