Critics and scholars have long debated what separates great from good theater performances.
Armed with a legendary script by the much-honored — and three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning — playwright Edward Albee, the cast of “A Delicate Balance” at Arena Stage has all the tools needed to push its performances from good to great.
Yet it’s Ellen McLaughlin, as the alcoholic sister Claire, who really grasps that gold ring in a soaring — one might suspect soon-to-be award-winning — performance. Whether prancing across the stage, dangling a sherry sniffer from her fingertips or lounging on the arm of the leather sofa, McLaughlin breathes genuine personality and believability into her character’s life.
And what a delightful life it is. Not to quibble with a great play, but some of the longer soliloquies in the play tend toward the obscure and leave the audience trying to unravel their codes. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what the extraordinary Albee was striving for when he wrote those lines for the play that debuted on Broadway in 1966.
Yet I do know that McLaughlin was the one who held many of the scenes together with her effusive yet never over-the-top performance as the ne’er-do-well sister who lives in the home of her sister and brother-in-law. Maybe it’s because we come to believe that McLaughlin is Claire that we can sense some of the other actors seem less than comfortable in their characters’ skins.
That’s not to say the other performances by the lady of the house Agnes (Kathleen Chalfant), her husband, Tobias (Terry Beaver), their much-married daughter Julia (Carla Harting), and best friends Harry (James Slaughter) and Edna (Helen Hedman) weren’t good. But — with a few notable exceptions — they weren’t great.
Much has been made publicly about Albee calling the Arena run “important.” It’s also been reported that he attended a table reading by the actors who perform under the direction of Pam McKinnon. In fairness to the company, it seems the production certainly met Albee’s exacting standards of a wealthy family that watches as its relationships crack under strain.
Clad in richly textured finery, the members of the elegant household seethe with insecurity and doubt as they review their lives and those of their nearest and dearest. As different family members and friends enter the home and bring with them the terrors and trials of the outside world, the internal burdens of Agnes and Tobias grow heavier.
All together this is a moving story about those who share each other’s physical lives but are emotional and intellectual strangers as told in a fine — if not great — production.
If you go
‘A Delicate Balance’
Where: Arena Stage in Crystal City, 1800 S. Bell St., Arlington
When: Various times through March 15
Info: $47 and up; 202-488-3300, arenastage.com
