All That Chat - re: A DELICATE BALANCE last night

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re: A DELICATE BALANCE last night

Posted by:	Delvino 12:23 pm EST 11/13/14
In reply to:	re: A DELICATE BALANCE last night - TheOtherOne 11:47 am EST 11/13/14

I had many problems with this production, primarily its insistence on setting the action in the present. Wrote a long-winded post on it, but a week later, it still troubles me. One of the characters who suffers most from the "updating," though there is none, other than two lines Albee changed with minimal impact, is Julia. That said, I thought Plimpton was one of the best things in this production, and made as persuasive a case as can be made. I found Mary Beth Hurt completely wrong last time out, and appreciated the sexuality and blunted edges Plimpton brought to the role. But this chic, literate character -- who would've graduated from college in say, 1996-1998 -- bears no resemblance to anyone her age in 2014. (4 marriages, never has tried marijuana; seemingly a progressive who unapologetically throws around the word "fag" with her GOP loathing liberal dad, etc.) Like the other three women in DELICATE BALANCE, she has no discernible career, or job, or apparently interests, and floats through the world, like Claire, Agnes and Edna (all originally created as women born 1910 - 1915, now boomers who endured Vietnam, 2nd wave of feminism), untethered to any sociopolitical changes in women's lives since 1966. Plimpton has an uphill battle, and succeeds more than she ought to.

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