A Delicate Balance
by Edward Albee
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Book Summary Information
Author: Edward AlbeeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1997-01-01
ISBN: 0452278090
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Plume
Book Reviews of A Delicate Balance
Book Review: my favorite Albee play
Summary: 5 Stars
Edward Albee is best-known for his play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a Broadway classic that was made into a film starring a young Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. However, this play, A Delicate Balance, is my favorite out of Albee's plays, and I've read nearly all of them. It won Albee the first of his 3 Pulitzer Prizes, and was made into a film starring Katherine Hepburn.
The story focuses on an aging WASP couple, Agnes and Tobias. Agnes' alcoholic sister, Claire, lives with the couple. Then events, or rather people, intrude into this carefully ordered household. First, two old friends, Harry and Edna, arrive without warning and ask to stay for an indeterminate time. Then Julia, the daughter of Agnes and Tobias, also asks for refuge. Cracks form in the veneer of control and peace that Agnes has cultivated. The character of Claire (a delightful drunk if there ever was one) steals the show as she alternately mocks the situation and tries to help the people involved.
As in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the characters occupy intensely charged domestic landscapes, inner spaces of anxiety and dread, and the climaxes of both plays are punctuated by speeches from the main characters. These monologues roll out with a cathartic force equivalent to operatic arias. True to its title, though, the play as a whole feels restrained and delicate, its turmoil gurgling underneath.
Since Albee is a playwright who is extremely sensitive to the musical, rhythmic aspect of drama, his plays can unfold in a reader's mind as easily, and perhaps more perfectly than if they were realized on a stage. Albee himself has compared playwrights' scripts to musical scores. Like a musician who can read music and then "hear" it in his mind, those readers who are comfortable reading dramatic dialogue and stage directions can easily experience A Delicate Balance in the privacy of their rooms.
Summary of A Delicate Balance
Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning play--winner of the 1996 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play--is now available in a trade paperback edition. A dark comedy about unfulfilled lives, broken promises, and family jealousies, A Delicate Balance has just been revived to triumphant acclaim at Lincoln Center's Plymouth Theatre in New York City.Albee, Edward Books
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