Maybe all theater is behavioral study, characters in a petri dish. Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo is a pair of two-handers yoked together thematically with Peter (Robert Sean Leonard) a foil for two outsized personae; in the first, Homelife, his wife Ann (Katie Finneran) baits him in one way, and in the second, The Zoo Story, Jerry (Paul Sparks), a seemingly aimless sort, provokes Peter in the park. As staged at the Signature Theater, under Lila Neugebauer’s fine direction, the production now so popular it was extended twice: Be ware of those who want to talk.
A publishing house executive, he is at work, and interrupted by his lovely blond wife for discussion of the various subjects that create intimacy for husbands and wives, and then some unexpected ones: Ann may want to have prophylactic mastectomy, and Peter ponders his penis, his circumcision: is his foreskin growing back? Does this dialogue stand in for marital sex? Clinical, practical, anatomical conditions of ageing together, yes, but not the matter of life and death examined in Act II.
Again at work reading, Peter occupies a bench in Central Park, on the east side near his home. A talkative type approaches, eager to engage. At turns funny, menacing and provocative, Jerry’s just been to the zoo and what ensues is a conversation that escalates in intensity and danger. A question posed at the end of Homelife, who get to eat what, takes form as Jerry on all fours imitates a dog chomping on hamburger, a delicious if poisoned treat. Ah, in its quiet open corners, the park can be a lonely place.
His first play, Albee wrote the original Zoo Story (1959) before his seething take on marriage, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961), changed his reputation. Examining humans on the lowest link of being’s great chain, and with this supremely talented cast, this production displays Albee’s disarming humor, scathing sensibility, and precision of language: as Jerry deploys a cliche, “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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