A Delicate Balance Revival 2014
Run Time:
Two hours and 55 minutes
Opened: November 20, 2014Two hours and 55 minutes
Closing: February 22, 2015
A Delicate Balance - 2014 Broadway History , Info & More
John Golden Theatre (Broadway)
252 West 45th St. New York, NY
A DELICATE BALANCE, Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning masterwork returns to Broadway with an extraordinary cast.
In A DELICATE BALANCE, Agnes (Glenn Close) and Tobias (John Lithgow), a long-married couple, must maintain their equilibrium as over the course of a weekend they welcome home their 36-year-old daughter (Martha Plimpton) after the collapse of her fourth marriage, and give shelter to their best friends (Bob Balaban and Clare Higgins), all the while tolerating Agnes' alcoholic sister Claire (Lindsay Duncan).
The Daily News calls A DELICATE BALANCE "a beautiful play- easily Albee's best and most mature, filled with humor and compassion and touched with poetry." It "proves that old-fashioned stage virtues- originality of voice, depth of feeling, richness of language- can still provide a thrill" (TIME Magazine). "If you really care about serious theatre, brilliant theatre, great acting, and great playwriting, this is the only play to see on Broadway" (New York Post).
A Delicate Balance - 2014 - Broadway Cast
PREVIEW A Delicate Balance - 2014 - Broadway
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FEATURED REVIEWS FOR A Delicate Balance
‘A Delicate Balance,’ theater review
8 / 10
Albee's title applies to virtually any scenario. But Agnes and Toby are keenly concerned with the delicate balance of keeping reality -- or anything, or anyone, unpleasant -- outside their front door...Agnes is tightly wrapped, in terms of both manner and costume, which smartly underscores the sense of insularity. Close, with her aristocratic take on Agnes, comes within inches of coming off as arch. That approach doesn't hurt the character. But Close's unintentional habit of tripping over Albee's dialogue doesn't help. Lithgow, meantime, is riveting every moment he's on stage -- which is a lot -- even when Tobias is silent. As he takes the character from quiet restraint to explosive urgency, he doesn't miss a beat and never for a second loses his equilibrium. His is a delicate -- and distinctive -- balance.
'A Delicate Balance' review: Great Edward Albee, tepid production
6 / 10
...although the play still dazzles with wit, gorgeous writing and the lurking terror of mortality, we miss the accumulating shock he gave to the characters' lives of cozy self-satisfaction. Director Pam MacKinnon...spells things out here instead of letting Albee toy with us through suggestion and suspense...Albee...challenges actors with tyrannical syntactic demands -- mouthfuls of polysyllabic, unforgiving, grown-up paragraphs that require virtuosos to make them sound like speech. Lithgow is droll and manor-born as the retired Tobias, though we never believe he is as ineffectual as Agnes claims. Oddly, Close, who has three best-actress Tonys, seemed daunted at a recent preview by Agnes' exhilarating but Olympian monologues. Stumbling over the words is a special problem for a silver fox who fancies herself the fulcrum of the family's equilibrium...instead of upsetting the balance of self-satisfied old money, the scene screams ostentation. Nothing, alas, is delicate.
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A Delicate Balance History
Other Productions of A Delicate Balance
| 1966 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1996 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
| 2014 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
| 2022 | Off-Broadway |
Transport Group Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
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