A spoiler below at the end of the post.
I don't know whether Close has adjusted her performance since you saw her, or simply gotten comfortable enough with her lines to convey her interpretation more clearly, or if we just see and the play (and the character) differently. I think she gives the best and most revelatory performance here.
Of course, it could also be that I'm just seeing the character and play differently now, with more experience of the play (and more years of my own on this planet). Perhaps I would now view any actress in the role differently than I might have in the past.
But this was the first time that I could really see the play more from Agnes's point of view. For the first time, I saw a woman with vulnerabilities who is in a very difficult situation (group of situations, really), with no one helping her to deal with them. Indeed, everyone around her seems to be making things worse for her. In the face of incredible stress and challenges, she maintains her poise. If she can also be nasty and cutting and sometimes ruthless, who can blame her?
Who would like to be in her situation dealing with all these things? Who among us would deal better with them?
There is a real clarity here to the series of decisions that Agnes must make. And perhaps because she so seems to be playing Agnes from the inside out, finding the stresses with which she must — the mix of obligation, self-image and demands on her — perhaps that is why she may still be struggling just a bit with her lines. Because her Agnes is so much more deeply involved with the realities of the character's given circumstances than I recall Hepburn or Harris having been. Honestly, when I saw her (some way into the run), Harris seemed totally lost. A great actress treading water. And Hepburn did her Hepburn, which fortunately suits the character to some degree but didn't seem to go very deep.
That is a very good point about the staging for Edna. Strong as Higgins is, I still wish I could see an actress who seemed to give Edna charm and a certain type of intelligence and wit that would help explain how she became Agnes's best friend. Agnes has wit and intelligence, and no one I've seen has found a way to play Edna with those qualities.
The rejection by Close's Agnes of Higgins's Edna at the end resonated so strongly for me. She is protecting herself and protecting her husband, but also dooming herself to feeling more alone than ever. But she has no choice.
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