Stars juggle stormy emotions in 'Delicate Balance'
NEW YORK — There are few things more terrifying than a calm Glenn Close.
Even if you've never seen Fatal Attraction, or the late, marvelous TV series Damages, there's something about that taut smile and coolly patrician features that say, "I'm playing nice now, but don't mess with me."
In the bracing new revival of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance (***½ out of four stars) that opened Thursday at Broadway's Golden Theatre, Close is cast as Agnes, the matriarch of an affluent, troubled family. Husband Tobias, played by an excellent John Lithgow, numbs his doubts and insecurities with drink, while Agnes' sister, Claire, who lives with the couple, drowns hers altogether.
The three are joined in short order by Agnes and Tobias' 36-year-old daughter, Julia, whose fourth marriage is floundering, and by Tobias' friend Harry and Harry's wife, Edna, who show up unexpectedly to announce that they, too, are moving in, having become afraid of their own house.
Agnes, who sees it as her task to maintain order, never entirely loses her cool. But in Close's revelatory performance, she evolves from a woman who seems almost preternaturally composed — even as she contemplates going mad, in her first lines — to a more intimidating and sadder creature striving desperately for "maintenance," as she puts it.
What this Agnes lets slip as the play progresses is less indignation than humanity. Other characters reveal themselves similarly under the careful but muscular direction of Pam MacKinnon, whose credits also include the stunning 2012 production of Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
MacKinnon certainly doesn't shy away from Balance's absurdist leanings. Playing Julia, Martha Plimpton enters like a hurricane, her voice bellowing, then turns into a whimpering little girl upon discovering that Harry and Edna have occupied her childhood bedroom.
Yet these tantrums make Julia no match for Claire, a role the superb Lindsay Duncan tears into with feline gusto. Wearing her dissipation like a slinky suit of armor, Claire scorns her sister and teases Tobias. But the actress also shows us, in quieter moments, how the character is dragged down by self-loathing.
Harry and Edna, conversely, seem relatively meek at first, despite their intrusiveness. But as they become harder to dismiss, the performances evolve accordingly. Clare Higgins' Edna becomes fearfully convincing, and quite funny, putting the others — Julia, in particular — in their place, while Bob Balaban's Harry slowly, gently asserts himself, making Tobias' fecklessness all the more glaring.
Tobias and Alice and their decades of baggage are central throughout, of course, and MacKinnon and her actors make it abundantly clear that this marriage is not a loveless one. The tenderness and regret in Lithgow's expression as Tobias looks at his wife, and the barely repressed agony Close brings to some lines, convey something greater than tolerance or co-dependence.
These fine actors find the warmth in Albee's stinging message. It's a pleasure to see them in roles that accommodate both their intensity and their flair for nuance.