When Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story” premiered in New York in 1960, it was celebrated as an example of American theater of the absurd and Albee was hailed as a crucial new voice on the American theater scene. In 2003, he added a second act and called the whole thing “At Home at the Zoo,” currently playing at Arena Stage. “At Home at the Zoo” begins in New York’s East Side upper-middle-class home of Ann (Colleen Delany) and Peter (Jeff Allin). Ann enters, saying, “We should talk.” Peter is absorbed in his work and responds only after she has left the room.
| Onstage |
| ‘At Home at the Zoo’ |
| Where: Arena Stage, 1101 6th St., SW |
| When: Through April 24 |
| Info: Tickets start at $55; 202-488-3300; arenastage.org |
That inability to communicate directly is the basic subject of “At Home at the Zoo.” In Act I, it’s apparent that Peter misunderstands Ann. She’s got a complicated emotional life that extends beyond their children and their orderly existence. Peter sees nothing of that or of her needs. Although Ann is grateful for her comfortable life, she admires people who can become “animals” for one another, satisfying one another out of “impure simple lust.”
That background becomes important in Act II, when a young man, Jerry (James McMenamin) approaches Peter in Central Park and begins to analyze and taunt him, calling him a “vegetable.” Jerry concedes that Peter is an “animal” only after Jerry has tricked him into becoming the unwitting partner in a violent event.
Albee’s text is not easy to perform. It sounds realistic, then veers into the absurd. Although all three performers are first-rate, this production seems curiously flat and director Mary Robinson doesn’t let the play achieve all the strangeness Albee built into it.
Delany plays Ann as a credible upper-class New Yorker with bizarre fantasies of how the other half lives. But Robinson makes Peter too one-dimensional and less interesting than the play suggests he might be. McMenamin’s delightful Jerry is low-key and at first he comes across as entertaining, not dangerous. When his true character is revealed at the end of Act II, it comes on like a flash of lightning.
Fans of Albee will recognize “At Home at the Zoo” as being far more complex than “The Zoo Story.” In addition to being a deeper and more poignant tale than that original work, it is a supreme example of how small miscommunications can be transformed into huge misunderstandings and how those misunderstandings can ripple into disastrous consequences.
