Criticism > Drama Criticism > Delicate Balance, A - Critical Reception

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CRITICAL RECEPTION

Initial reaction to A Delicate Balance was decidedly mixed. Harold Clurman considered it a brilliant play that "dramatizes discomfort": in the world depicted in the drama "one's soul finds no resting place, no spiritual security." Robert Brustein, however, condemned it as "a very bad play … boring and trivial," while John Gassner pronounced it "neither a very good play nor a very bad one." When it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, most regarded the decision as a belated attempt by the Pulitzer committee to atone for failing to give Albee the prize for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Subsequent commentators have sought to identify the unnamed fear that suffuses the play by investigating the issues of isolation, alienation, and individual identity. John J. von Szeliski has called A Delicate Balance "a brilliant and highly significant play" in which the characters "suddenly realize … that their lives represent no real solace...

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1. Introduction
2. Critical Reception
3. Production Reviews
4. Critical Commentary
5. Further Reading
6. Copyright

1. Drama