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by Edward Albee, directed by Stuart Scadron-Wattles

Theatre & Company, Market Theatre, Kitchener

February 16-March 3, 2001

“Terror at Home”

In its eleventh season, Theatre & Company continues to provide Kitchener and the surrounding area with theatre more challenging than many larger companies would attempt.  Unlike his best known work "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", Edward Albee's later "A Delicate Balance" (1966) is more subdued, more abstract and more enigmatic.  Both plays deal with nights of confusion and terror ending on a symbolic Sunday morning, but where "Virginia Woolf" presents us with some resolution of the central problem, "A Delicate Balance" does not.  Even the central problem itself is not clear in the later play.  To make such a play work requires very clear direction and a cast who understand how their roles fit into the puzzle Albee has created.  Luckily, director Stuart Scadron-Wattles and his troupe prove themselves more than equal to the task.

The play is set in the smart living room of the wealthy Agnes and Tobias.  Agnes is meditating aloud about the pleasure it would be to go mad, realizing that as long as she can speculate on the subject it will not have happened.  The main thorn in proper Agnes's side is her proudly drunken sister Claire, who has come to live with them after quitting an Alcoholics Anonymous retreat.  Soon Agnes and Tobias learn that their daughter Julia has broken up with her fourth husband and will also be returning home to live with them.  Before Julia arrives, however, Harry and Edna, best friends of Agnes and Tobias, pay a surprise visit.  It turns out to be even more of a surprise when the couple make clear that they have actually come not just to visit but to live with Agnes and Tobias in order to escape the unnamed "terror" that has made their own home unliveable.  This intrusion which so closely treads on the boundary of friendship, on the rights of host and guest, upsets "the delicate balance" of the household in ways grievous to all but Claire, who watches everything, including her own life, from the sidelines.

The play is well acted by all and everyone has mastered Albee's complex poetic prose, but I must single out Alan K. Sapp for giving a particularly fine performance as Tobias.  It is crucial to understanding the play to see that Tobias is in the midst of struggling with his own "terror".  The nature of this terror is unclear, but it has to do with his reaction to the death of his young son Teddy, his subsequent refusal to sleep with Agnes and his and Harry's cheating on their wives with the same woman.  Sapp's carefully detailed performance shows Tobias to be on edge from the beginning, with his unease growing to a kind of desperation in his confrontation with Harry near the end.  By making this undercurrent of fear so evident in all he says, Sapp helps us see that Harry and Edna are really doubles for Tobias and Agnes.  The one couple may have fled a horror in their home, but Tobias sees an abyss of horror opening in his own.  Once this is established, we can see that Harry and Edna are also doubles for Claire and Julia, both of whom have fled discord in the outside world to seek comfort with Agnes and Tobias. 

Linda G. Bush gives Agnes a brittle but superior aura and an acid wit, while Alyson Scadron-Wattles (her real-life daughter) gives Julia a forcefulness and temper that make it easy to see why she might not be very good at marriage.  Both characters are perfectionists in a far from perfect world.

Kathleen Sheehy makes the alcoholic Claire a bemused observer of the action not unlike one of Shakespeare's Fools.  Her deadpan delivery of Claire's wry comments punctuates the performance with laughter.  She also has impeccable timing and a great knack for impersonation. 

Robin Bennett and Andrea Tutt play the "visiting" Harry and Edna differently from what I have seen elsewhere--he with a European accent and she with an imperious air.  It seems a bit odd at first but it does reinforce the idea of their arrival as a kind of invasion. 

The play is staged in the round at the versatile Market Theatre.  Now having seen it done this way it is hard to imagine anything more appropriate for a play all about people observing other people and trying to infer meaning from their actions.  Adding to the effect, Mike Peng has created an attractive, clean-lined sunken living room for Agnes and Tobias, thus making it into a kind of pit or arena where the characters struggle for dominance. 

Director Stuart Scadron-Wattles adds another layer of meaning through his blocking.  The characters seem to move continually in a counterclockwise vortex, with arrivals from the three entrances adding energy to the spin.  As dramaturg Henry Bakker's excellent note points out, there is a kind of void at the centre of the play, a fall into nothingness feared at some level by all the characters.  Scadron-Wattles’ blocking makes the characters appear as debris swirling round this central void before their final descent.  He has given the play a slightly slower pace than usual with the great advantage of allowing the imagery and allusions in Albee's complex language to register.  He has not succumbed to the temptation (as other directors have) of allowing the comedy purveyed by Claire to dominate and thus distort the play.  He also permits long silences reign to signify characters' internal debate over what should or should not be said.  My only quibble is that he makes Harry and Edna's first entrance so hearty, we don't really see the full effect on them of the "terror" that has made them flee their home.

It is very heartening to see a small regional theatre company choose exciting repertoire outside the usual rehash of Broadway fluff one too often encounters.  When performed this well and in an intimate venue such as the 166-seat Market Theatre, intriguing plays like Albee's have much greater impact.  I hope the success of this play encourages Theatre & Company to bring us more Albee, whose work they seem to understand so well, and other such plays that entertain while challenging us to exercise our minds.

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: Kathleen Sheehy.