Review: A Delicate Balance at Leamington theatre is worth watching twice

​The Loft Theatre Company offers up another example of fine acting and intelligent direction. ​This time it is A Delicate Balance by Pulitzer prize winning author Edward Albee.

This is a story of a family and their friends, set in a middle-class suburban environment in late 1960s America. If this is the apple pie version of the American Dream, there is definitely a worm in it somewhere.

There is not much plot to speak of. Tobias (Craig Shelton) and Agnes (Lorna Middleton) live with Agnes’s alcoholic sister Claire (Leonie Frazier). It’s not a happy arrangement, but they know each other so well it would be hard to imagine them living otherwise. Claire doesn’t seem to do much except drink and make barbed remarks. Agnes is the matriarch, the fulcrum upon which the family turns, and Tobias the somewhat long-suffering husband in a house full of women. Then their daughter Julia (Leonie Slater) arrives, following the breakdown of her fourth marriage. Already we are in very fractured territory. Then their best friends Harry (Paul Curran) and Edna (Lucinda Toomey) arrive. They have been driven out of their house by some nameless fear. We never know what it is, but it is enough to make them insist they move in, like cuckoos in the nest. The rest of the play follows the breakdown and the tentative restoration of order in this little society, driven apart by conflicts of loyalty, love and friendship.

This is a play well worth seeing twice to get the full measure. The first time will impress you with the force of the acting and the tense, neurotic atmosphere of the whole thing; the second time will allow you to drill down into the language and the finer nuances between the characters.

Every player is on top form and commands the stage with their own strength of character and skill. A Delicate Balance will move you in complex ways. Hard to pull off without falling into melodrama, it is a masterpiece in which all the parts fit together in a delicate, discordant harmony.

A Delicate Balance runs until September 30. Visit lofttheatrecompany.com or call 01926 830680 to book.