
DATE: Monday, November 3, 1997              TAG: 9711020007

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E4   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Theater Review 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, THEATER CRITIC 

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

CAST MAINTAINS ``DELICATE BALANCE''

``A DELICATE BALANCE'' is a play about a neurotic Connecticut family who talk about ``all these years that we have put up with each other's wiles.'' It concerns, according to one of its own characters, ``those of you who want to die and take your whole life doing it.''

It also takes the entire play doing it. These are rich WASPS who seemingly have nothing to do but go at each other, not directly, but with sly little digs that reveal their contempt. Familiarity has not bred just hatred but something more deadly, boredom.

The band-aid for each spat is a well mixed martini.

Agnes and Tobias co-exist in a vacuous mansion with her alcoholic sister, Claire, and lots of talk and pondering. Agnes asks ``Do we dislike happiness? We manipulate such a portion of our despair.''

The playwright, the as-usual-bitter Edward Albee, also manipulates a good portion of the talk. Spoiled-brat daughter Julia returns home from her fourth broken marriage to find the family's best friends, Edna and Harry, moved into her room. Edna and Harry have fled their own home to escape some unnamed terror, in a mystic touch that seems borrowed from Harold Pinter.

``A Delicate Balance,'' now being presented by the Virginia Stage Company, seems to have always gotten more than it deserved. Not much of a play, it received the Pulitzer Prize as compensation for the scandal when the Pulitzer committee refused to give the award the year before to Albee's masterpiece, ``Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?''

Ever since, ``Delicate Balance'' revivals have been blessed with particularly gifted casts, including Katharine Hepburn and Paul Scofield in the film version and the amazing Rosemary Harris and George Grizzard in the recent Broadway hit. This is a play that depends heavily, almost totally, on its performers.

Blessedly, it is given a fine reading by the ensemble presently on the stage of the Wells Theatre, under the direction of Charlie Hensley. Rosemary Prinz is a steely matriarch as Agnes, the ``licensed wife'' who holds her territory as if she were a prospector filing a claim for gold. What she gets, though, is a tarnished, not golden, life.

Robert Phelps is effective as a seemingly weak Tobias, delivering long monologues like the one about a cat that no longer liked him. But he captures the complexities of a man who rules by distance.

Karla Mason is suitably pouty as the daughter who runs home whenever she can't cope. Mary Jane Wells and John Thomas Waite have the unenviable task of playing boring nonentities who arrive and refuse to leave. Helen-Jean Arthur is remarkably restrained and delightfully coarse in the role that is most often overplayed (particularly by Elaine Stritch in the recent Broadway version) - the alcoholic sister who is something of a Greek-chorus onlooker as well as much-needed comic relief.

The production is blessed, most of all, by a commendable restraint. It lets the emptiness speak for itself, not resorting to showy fireworks.

Dex Edwards' set design is a curious architectural drawing that pens in construction instructions rather than the construction itself. It serves a purpose in suggesting the unfinished, unconstructed world in which these people live. To the eye, though, it simply looks unfinished.

``A Delicate Balance'' is a perfect companion piece to the current admirable film ``The Ice Storm,'' also about a neurotic Connecticut family amid social change. You should see them both.

What is this family's problem anyway? It seems they suffer because they suffer. They hate because they hate. Albee tells us a good deal more than he shows us.

But the cast gives the play as much, and better, than it deserves.

This is what live theater is all about. These fine performers give to us a play that demands our attention, even it doesn't often offer involvement in return. ILLUSTRATION: THEATER REVIEW

``A Delicate Balance''

What: The drama by Edward Albee

When: Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 4 and 8

p.m., Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m., through Nov. 16

Where: Wells Theater, Monticello Avenue and Tazewell Street in

downtown Norfolk

Who: Directed by Charlie Hensley, featuring Rosemary Prinz,

Robert Phelps, Helen-Jean Arthur, Karla Mason, John Thomas Waite and

Mary Jane Wells

How Much: $17-$32

Call: 627-1234