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The Glenn Close Agnes.

Posted by:	Delvino 07:06 am EST 11/14/14
In reply to:	DELICATE BALANCE tonight - NeoAdamite 02:04 am EST 11/14/14

I don't attribute the issues with her performance to film technique. Close is a highly trained, experienced stage actor, not afraid of size and heightened emotion, all characteristic of her prior roles. Yet I found her very much as you did: lacking a kind of confidence as Agnes. The production is in many ways built around her character, she's the center (the blocking often places her in strongest positions, and she begins and ends the play dead center.) Close falls prey to a kind of one-note intellectualized approach to Agnes, held hostage to the language rather than able to use it as a center for her own power. Agnes's loquaciousness is a way she steals focus, demands attention, exacts revenge. "Forgive me for being articulate" she says acidly, on one of her exits, and it's intended to be ironic, and even a kind of warning (this is her turf, after all), since Agnes is very proud of her verbal acuity. Yet Close hasn't yet found a necessary ownership of the word play so that she might wield her diction as a cudgel against others. She is oddly hampered by the speeches, and though they are ornate and adorned with intricately shaped digressions (the first few pages are a killer), they allow Agnes to hold court with purpose: to make sure her position in the home is absolute. Close is of course smart, elegant and refined and easily possesses all of the surface qualities. But to me, she hasn't found enough to go after in the woman. A strong goal in the storytelling. She's static, expounding rather than trying to win points or even sometimes destroy. It's a disappointment, and an enigma.

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