Theater: Whisky Before Breakfast

A Delicate Balance. A character in the new play with which Edward Albee opens the Broadway season is somewhat shocked to find himself drinking whisky before breakfast. Says another character reassuringly: "Think of it as very late at night." The lateness of the night, the thirst of the soul, the solitary anguish of the self—these have always been the prevailing mood winds of Albee's plays. But he cannot construct a credible plot in which to trap them, and he fails again in Balance.

With gracious manners, in a spacious drawing room, a fiftyish couple are...