Reviewed by Brian Gridley for Time Out  16/7/98

The works of Edward Albee, like them or not, are among the more challenging in contemporary theatre - challenging for actor and audience alike. The multiple Pulitzer Prize winner takes us down a road which is invariably extreme, deep and dense. A Delicate Balance (Sydney Theatre Company, Drama Theatre, Opera House) provides a modicum more levity than his Virginia Woolf written four years earlier, but it’s still theatre of dark and complex dreams. 

Established, well-to-do couple Agnes (Dinah Shearing) and Tobias (Michael Craig) are living comfortable, middle aged suburban co-existence. That is except for Agnes’ sister Claire (Maggie Kirkpatrick), a house guest seriously (but happily) into the bottle, and daughter Julia (Heather Mitchell) whose latest marriage has folded and who has phoned to say she’s on her way home to mummy. Then who should arrive, unannounced and late at night, but old buddies Harry (Don Reid) and Edna (Jane Harders), scared out of their own home by some mysterious, intangible influence, seeking shelter and the security of a lifelong friendship. The spoilt, petulant Julia duly arrives to find good old Harry and Edna sleeping in “her” room - not, perhaps, just for the night but maybe for the duration. Meanwhile Claire is boozing merrily along (and stirring the pot) as the first act closes. Classic Albee. 

This particular offering is, however, a curiosity. While it would be all to easy to over-play the excesses of some of the characters, it is as if the director Simon Phillips has turned too far the other way. The over-all result is anti-climatic, of a script often spoken rather than felt by some of the actors, an uncertain start on opening night relieved by some of Albee’s brilliant lines but ultimately failing to ignite the real passion in his several messages - among them the insecurity of security and the burning question: is there a reasonable limit to love and friendship? Kirkpatrick and Mitchell are exceptions. The former’s Claire penetrates the hypocrisy of righteousness and gets it just right as the catalyst of the whole piece.  Mitchell, the multi married daughter, avoids, like Kirkpatrick, stepping over the fine line of self-indulgence in her portrayal of 36 year old immaturity. Reid and Harders, as the drop ins, are competent without quite making their initial situation or the move from helplessness to assertiveness quite credible. As for Shearing and Craig, their characters - around whom the burden of the tale basically revolves - rarely seemed on opening night to get closer than the periphery of the real involvement. The STC production (set designer Michael Scott-Mitchell, lighting Nick Schlieper) is typically sumptuous (and effective) but this and even more passages of strident, pretentious music can’t paper over the deficiencies of pallid individual performances. One other point: the perennial debate about American accents arises again here. The results on this occasion are erratic and distracting.  If seasoned actors such as those falter, the affectation should be summarily dismissed.
 

Reviewed by Brian Gridley for Time Out 
16th July 1998