A Delicate Balance: Analysis of Setting
"A Delicate Balance: Analysis of Setting" explores the significance of the domestic space in Edward Albee's play, focusing on the living room of Agnes and Tobias, a married couple living in a well-appointed suburban home. The set, described with minimal details, reflects the couple's affluence and social status while also highlighting a deeper psychological crisis within their family. This space becomes a microcosm of the characters' struggles with existential fears, as Agnes grapples with impending emotional collapse, and Tobias embodies a sense of ineffectuality. The setting is further complicated by the arrival of their friends, Edna and Harry, who seek refuge from an overwhelming sense of meaninglessness outside their own home. This juxtaposition of a seemingly safe, affluent environment against the backdrop of personal and existential turmoil illustrates the fragility of their lives. Albee's choice to place these themes in a familiar, middle-class context allows audiences to engage with the characters' dilemmas in a relatable manner, making the exploration of absurdity and fear more accessible. The analysis of setting thus plays a crucial role in understanding the complex interplay between domesticity and existential angst in the play.
A Delicate Balance: Analysis of Setting
First published: 1966
First produced: 1966, at the Martin Beck Theatre, New York City
Type of work: Drama
Type of plot: Absurdist
Time of work: October, in the mid-1960’s
Places Discussed
Agnes and Tobias’s home
Agnes and Tobias’s home. Home of a married couple whose living room is the setting for the entire play. Edward Albee’s stage directions describe the set as the “living room of a large and well-appointed suburban house.” This room contains a library, chairs, a supply of liquor bottles, and an arched entryway. Albee provides remarkably few other details about the set, but the fact that the room is “well-appointed” indicates that it should reflect its residents’ affluence, class, and taste. However, their affluence provides no protection against a family implosion—the imminent psychological collapse that Agnes fears, the gray ineffectualness of Tobias, the failure of their daughter Julia’s four marriages, the alcoholism of Agnes’s sister Claire.
Outside the walls of the house looms an equally terrifying if less readily definable menace that draws Agnes and Tobias’s friends Edna and Harry into their home to seek haven as well. After eating dinner at their own home, they suddenly and unaccountably became frightened and can no longer endure remaining alone in their house. Agnes offers them Julia’s room for the night, and they retire. What troubles Edna and Harry is an overwhelming meaninglessness, a realization of the “absurd,” a glimpse of the existential void.
Other playwrights treated similar themes in the decade preceding A Delicate Balance. What Albee did was to domesticate this theme, presenting a more affluent American setting and characters from whom, presumably, primarily middle-class theatergoers in the United States would feel less estranged and by whom they would be at least initially less discomfited.
Bibliography
Amacher, Richard E. Edward Albee. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1982. A fine overview of Albee’s plays and career. Considers the influence of the Theater of the Absurd on Albee’s work.
Bigsby, C. W. E. Albee. Edinburgh, Scotland: Oliver & Boyd, 1969. Identifies Albee’s liberal humanistic and existential concerns. An excellent analysis of Albee’s thought, with a perceptive discussion of A Delicate Balance.
Bigsby, C.W.E., ed. Edward Albee, 1975.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: Edward Albee, 1987.
Hirsch, Foster. Who’s Afraid of Edward Albee?, 1978.
Kolin, Philip C., ed. Conversations with Edward Albee, 1988.
Kolin, Philip C., and J. Madison Davis, eds. Critical Essays on Edward Albee, 1986.
McCarthy, Gerry. Edward Albee, 1987.
Paolucci, Anne. From Tension to Tonic: The Plays of Edward Albee. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972. One of the most insightful studies available. Focuses on Albee’s use of language, especially metaphor and irony. Contains a chapter on A Delicate Balance.
Roudané, Matthew. Understanding Edward Albee. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987. An excellent starting point for the study of Albee’s work. Traces the development of his affirmative existential vision.
Rutenberg, Michael E. Edward Albee: Playwright in Protest. New York: DBS, 1969. Written with Albee’s cooperation. Concentrates on political and social dimensions of Albee’s work. Contains two interviews and an interesting analysis of A Delicate Balance from a sociological point of view.
Stenz, Anita Maria. Edward Albee: The Poet of Loss, 1978.
Wasserman, Julian N., ed. Edward Albee: An Interview and Essays, 1983.