BERKELEY---Aurora Theatre has started off the 2011-1012 season with a play that makes you cringe, laugh, and contemplate the characters long after getting to know them. Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance” is a fine-tuned play on family disfunction , perhaps recalling Pinter or Chekhov.  This is the balance of the status quo; just when it looked like the tipping point had arrived, balance was regained.

Tobias (Ken Grantham) and Agnes (Kimberly King), retired well-off suburbanites, are having after-dinner drinks in their large and well-appointed living room. Agnes does most of the talking; she wonders whether she will stay sane as she enters old age. It is clear that she is the one in charge. She carries herself a bit queenly and talks in long paragraphs, taking little digs at Tobias from time to time. He is passive, and used to it, well-dressed and ineffectual.

They are joined by Claire (Jamie Jones), who is Agnes’ sister and lives with them. She is an alcoholic, but says she would rather be called “a drunk” as  she couldn’t stand the people at A.A. She finds delight in life by boozing, criticizing Agnes, and commiserating with Tobias, with whom she once had a brief affair. A telephone call from Julia (Carrie Paff) announces her imminent arrival home. She is leaving her fourth marriage. Tobias hesitantly says he should try to talk to her about her failed marriages.It is clear he feels he is a failure as a father. He has nearly as many drinks as Claire does.

Suddenly there is a knock at the door, and old friends Edna (Anne Darragh) and Harry (Charles Dean) arrive. They were not expected; Claire persists in asking why they have come. They had been sitting at home after dinner, Edna doing needlepoint and Harry studying French, when they were suddenly overwhelmed with inexplicable fear. It was terrifying, and so they dropped everything and have come to their friends for refuge. They are given Julia’s room, expecting them to stay one night.

Julia arrives next day, and is furious at finding her room occupied. Edna and Harry say they intend to stay.

For a while, watching this play progress, I was waiting for the denouement, but there isn’t one. This excellent play of Albee’s is a finely-tuned study in dysfunction. Agnes and Tobias have a history of differences not resolved, Claire has given up on life, Edna and Harry decide to leave when they realize that if the situation were reversed and Agnes and Tobias came to them, they would say “No.” Agnes describes their fear as a plague, one which infects them all.

We learn that Julie marries men who are bound to fail as husbands--a gambler, a homosexual, a womanizer. Nearing 40, she keeps returning home, wanting the relationship missing in her childhood. It is Claire who says “We can’t have change; it throws the balance off.”