Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning play A Delicate Balance reveals the emotional savagery of suburbia and the psychological terror of empty lives. First produced in 1966, this dark drawing room comedy may be Albee's masterpiece, as powerful in its 1996 revival as it was thirty years before.
Its characters maintain a delicate balance between self-destruction and survival when a bitter 36-year-old daughter returns home to the family nest after the collapse of her fourth marriage. The much wed Julia shatters the uneasy peace of he long-married parents, Agnes and Tobias, and their permanent guest—acerbic, unpredictable, and witty alcoholic sister-in-law Claire. When two lifelong friends gate-crash this impromtu reunion, the masks of civility drop and raw feelings emerge. Filled with shades of meaning, subtleties, and whole paragraphs of brilliant dialogue, A Delicate Balance has become classic theater, a timeless mirror of the worst, and sometimes the best, aspects of modern life.
"It has the stature and eloquence of a classic."
—Howard Kissel, New York Daily News
"Exquisite! It amply demonstrates there are plenty of laughs to be found at the edge of the abyss."
—Jeremy Gerard, Variety
"Theatrical fireworks."
—Vincent Canby, New York Times
"Enormously satisfying. We have been starved for Edward Albee's spectacularly verbal characters, for idealized, horrible, and fascinating grown-ups who talk in paragraphs, not to mention witty, entertaining, and disturbing arias."
—Linda Winer, Newsday
"Beautifully written … a play that asks serious questions about human values."
—John Heilpern, New York Observer
