Through 11/4/2007
Reviewed by Steve
Calllahan
The St. Louis Actors' Studio has
inaugurated the new Gaslight Theatre with a powerful production of Edward
Albee's drama, A Delicate Balance. The Gaslight, like the recently opened
Ivory Theatre, is an emblem of St. Louis' burgeoning theatre life. Located at 356 North Boyle, the Gaslight is
unpretentious but comfortable. Housed in
an historic store-front building near the old Gaslight Square, it seats only
ninety-eight patrons, but the Actors' Studio has an ambitious program including
actor training, improv workshops and the development of new works.
A Delicate Balance appeared in 1966-five years after Albee's blockbuster Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and in many ways it addresses the same problems. Tobias and Agnes are a long-married, long-wealthy couple. Their comfortable lives are stressed by the presence of Agnes' live-in alcoholic sister, Claire, and a daughter, Julia, who is returning home-yet again-after the break-up of her fourth marriage. This is a family in a sort of muted but profound mourning-over they know not what. Agnes has long been the controlling force in the marriage, though she tries to assert that Tobias has made all the moral decisions and she has merely implemented them. The family is fraught with ancient grievance and ancient guilt. Old infidelity taints the air, but the great guilt and pain is from the early, rather mysterious death of a son. Into this matrix arrive, uninvited, Harry and Edna, fleeing some vague undefined terror that has forced them from their home. As Tobias and Agnes' life-long best friends they have come now to live with them.
The role of Agnes is in the capable hands of Lavonne Byers. This is an enormously difficult role; Agnes' speech consists of hyper-articulate, complexly structured, poly-parenthetical sentences-paragraphs really. This cold, objective, dreadfully intellectual discourse is part of Agnes' punishment of her husband-and it makes it hard for an actress to understand and internalize Agnes' thoughts. It also makes it hard for an audience to feel that this woman is quite human.
Larry Dell gives a strong and charming Tobias-especially in the final act, where he valiantly but fecklessly strives to recover his masculine authority. Sarah Cannon fills the daughter, Julia, with a properly screaming anguish, as she desperately demands this haven that has been usurped by Harry and Edna. Greg Johnston and Penney Kols hit just the right note-half hesitancy, half demand-as Harry and Edna. Ms. Kols' remarkably expressive face simply shouts her terrified misery.
All fine performances. But for me Tamara Kenny, as the drinking sister Claire, quite steals the show. Claire is the best and showiest role in the play, but Ms. Kenny makes it a triumph. When she enters it's like a bright trumpet energizing and focusing the whole scene. One could obtain a perfect understanding of the play simply by watching her keen attention to others and her perfect, mentally supple reactions to them. Everything she does is natural, graceful, beautifully motivated, and expressive of the deep intelligence that this particular Albee play requires.
As in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the mourning that we see here is for the death in our modern world of the natural masculine and feminine.
The set, by Patrick Huber with scenic artist Sarah Linquist, is elegant and beautiful. A large print of Géricault's Raft of the Medusa reflects the desperate grasping for rescue that fills the souls of so many in this play. Director David Wassilak (who also did the beautiful sound design) can be proud of this fine production.
A Delicate Balance plays at the Gaslight Theatre through November 4 [2007]. It's a rock-solid production of a great play. You shouldn't miss it.
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