Benjamin Franklin famously observed, "Fish and visitors smell after three days."

If Franklin had encountered the characters in the Actors Group production of Edward Albee’s "A Delicate Balance," he would have equated them to something with a much shorter shelf life. Albee is a talented modern American playwright, but TAG’s staging of this Albee play lacks the passion and gripping energy seen in recent local productions of two of his other works, "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and "The Goat: or, Who Is Sylvia?"

With a running time somewhere around two hours, and with little reason to empathize with the characters or make an emotional investment in the outcome of their bickering, it is a long, slow slog.

In real life any sensible person would run from these people: an estranged couple, their unstable daughter, the wife’s alcoholic sister and the couple’s "best friends" who move in on them and claim squatters’ rights on the daughter’s bedroom.

But this isn’t real life, it’s theater, and the performances of two cast members provide an incentive to stay past intermission.

Danielle Zalopany (Julia) makes her TAG debut memorable with a commanding portrayal of the conflicted, vulnerable, emotionally frazzled daughter. Zalopany pouts and shouts, chews her fingernails in some scenes and plays with her hair like a borderline neurotic in others. Her eyes, large and expressive, convey an assortment of uneasy emotions. Zalopany gives us a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown and creates a character to care about.

TAG production manager Laurie Tanoura (Claire), last seen as the improbably noble homeless woman in TAG’s revival production of "Merry Christmas, Roberta," shows the true range of her acting skills with her performance as a perceptive, no-nonsense alcoholic. She has most of the best one-liners in the show and makes the most of all of them. Tanoura is spot-on in the scenes where Claire is observing the others, her eyes sparkling with gleeful malice as she awaits the inevitable opportunity to zap someone with a well-timed zinger.

The role is a career-best performance for Tanoura on the local stage.

Dale Hathaway (Harry) and TAG board member Suzanne Maloney (Edna) amp up the bizarro factor as the "best friends" — adept comic figures in Act 1 who become vaguely menacing moochers in Act 2. Wil Kahele (Tobias) plays the husband as a stolid and formal man whose emotions are usually in suspended animation.

TAG board member Frankie Enos (Agnes) completes the cast as the bitter, manipulative and generally emotionless wife. Agnes’ reasons for feeling alienated and bitter and frustrated with life are eventually revealed, but Enos ensures that she remains a flat and unsympathetic character.

TAG’s "Balance" is flat as well.