‘A Delicate Balance’ Is a Matter of Decisions, Decisions

Edward Albee has always been a sort of problem child among American playwrights in the sense that he’s almost impossible to place. He sets a tone at one point (his absurdist early “The American Dream”), then later turns around and shows his utterly naturalistic streak (his hard-edged “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”).

Albee seems at times to write frantically, then disappear for a while, only to pop up out of another rabbit hole with a different mask on. That’s what happened in 1966 when Albee’s “A Delicate Balance” opened on Broadway with Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Elaine Stritch and Rosemary Harris.

“Balance,” winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award, is being revived on Broadway, but if you don’t want to drive that far, you can catch a more immediate revival, in previews tonight and Friday and opening Saturday at Santa Ana’s Alternative Repertory Theatre, a group that has never been afraid to take chances.

Staging an Albee play is always a risk. His plays are complicated and tricky, especially in “Balance,” where the playwright’s tendency toward absurdism blends with his equally strong leaning toward naturalism.

The play’s absurdist qualities may not be evident at first glance, but at ART, director Laurie Freed got the clue early on in rehearsal.

“I realized,” Freed says, “that the play is very funny. A play this heavy could be death for audience, director and actor, but from the first read-through, I was laughing out loud. There is a wealth of humor here, and I have consciously sought it out. These people are not going around gloom and doom. And I’ve been trying to seek out where the humor is for each character. It has made the whole show very different.”

Part of that humor, Freed says, is found in the gamesmanship that Albee’s characters always engage in. Everything doesn’t have to be deadly serious.

“It pops energy into the play, and it makes for an easy access for an audience into the play’s meaning and how it might affect them and who in the play they might relate to.”

The play’s meaning, and Albee’s message, is laid out in a tale of a family that maintains that delicate balance among themselves between what is normal and acceptable to the world and what is not, between what makes them comfortable and what makes them uncomfortable.

Suddenly, terror enters their home in the form of a couple they’ve known for many years. The couple announce that they will be moving in permanently, and, as Albee might be saying, let the games begin.

“The family is being tested,” Freed explains. “They are morally tested at this point. Each character goes through this moral struggle, asking themselves questions about their obligations to friends, to family, to society. ‘What choices do I have to make?’

“Albee brings out the fact that this particular family seems to waste their opportunities. That’s the bigger picture Albee is looking at, that people do have choices in the world. And what they do is they settle. They go into a paralysis. They don’t change. They don’t risk. They’re afraid to throw the balance off.”

Freed says that Albee’s message will always be as pertinent as it was when the play opened 31 years ago, that we should take risks and that we do have obligations and responsibilities to other people. She agrees with the playwright that we have to be actively engaged and make decisions.

When ART announced “A Delicate Balance” as part of its season, Freed thought she might audition for a role. She was last seen at ART in the production of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” as Willy Loman’s wife, Linda.

Freed says she was a little taken aback when artistic director Pat Terry brought her the script and suggested that Freed direct it. Her reaction was, “Oh my God, what a challenge. I thought, fine, I’m going to bite my teeth down on this one and see what happens.”

What happened for Freed was a kind of journey of discovery. She says she found it a beautifully structured play but a very difficult one.

“Also,” she says, “its beauty is in the rhythm of the play. It really does sing.”

* When: Previews at 8 tonight and Friday. The regular run opens Saturday and continues through March 9.

* Where: Alternative Repertory Theatre, 1636 S. Grand Ave., Santa Ana.

* Whereabouts: Exit the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway at Edinger Avenue and go west, turning left onto Grand Avenue. The theater will be on the right.

* Wherewithal: $12 (previews); $16-$18 (regular run).

* Where to call: (714) 836-7929.