‘The Zoo Story,’ sixty-five years old, shows its age in a new production at Plays and Players

The seventh annual Philly Theatre Week runs April 3rd through the 14th. My first show will be The Zoo Story. It is a one-act with two actors by Edward Albee, first performed in West Berlin in 1959 and was Albee’s first foray into theater. Fifty years after its release, Albee felt that his play lacked depth in one of the two characters and created a prequel to the Zoo Story to give greater clarity. Can The Zoo Story resonate with its audience today?

A block from Rittenhouse Square, a marque brightens a building in the middle of Delancey Street announcing Plays and Players Theatre. The Skinner Theater is a third-floor walk-up that limits mobility and access but in return you get an intimate space where you can reach out and touch the players.

In small theater productions, the limitations ask for even greater performances from the actors and the design team. Three blue sky panels suggest the type of day Albee envisioned. The set is populated with a bench, a lamppost, and a painted floor depicting grass and a path.

The action takes place in Central Park where we meet the two characters. Jerry is a disheveled and precarious man living in a rooming house on the Upper West Side while Peter, sitting on a park bench, is his antithesis. He is a publishing executive living stably on the Upper East Side. I’m struck by the choice for Jerry’s wardrobe. He is not looking disheveled or unkempt and he has just walked from Greenwich Village up 5th Ave to the zoo.

The dialogue is humorous and the acting in this show is up to the task but in this visceral performance, I wanted to experience more of Jerry’s world. The show runs only 10 days and perhaps that’s a limiting factor but I would have wanted greater absorption into the world of Central Park and Jerry’s mental health. The lighting changes left me feeling there was discontinuity – with the lighting brightest at the beginning of the scene then fading in the middle and returning towards the play’s end. There is no sound or audio of any kind to either distract or focus the audience. The original Off-Broadway production in 1960 offered nature sounds, and I think it could have been easily adapted for this show. 

This play exhibits its age through several distinct markers. Primarily, its treatment of homosexuality reflects outdated perspectives, highlighting a disconnect with contemporary discourse which isn’t a problem per se but the flash of statements like, “I was queer” are not as powerful as they may have been 65 years ago. The narrative seems tailored for a predominantly white audience, underscoring the lack of inclusivity prevalent during the era of its creation and performance. The dialogue in the Plays and Players version underwent minor alterations to bring inconsequential instances up to date. Albee made clear during his life that he did not want the “race” of his actors to change from what was written. If the aim of Plays and Players Theatre is ‘to provide intelligent, inclusive and diverse plays that engage and entertain audiences, to invest in local talent,’ why opt for a play featuring two white men, thus denying the audience a chance to witness it free from the confines of a white patriarchal shroud?

Nevertheless, The Zoo Story will captivate you from the pithy and humorous dialogue to its crescendo of a finale. It is a play worth watching and discussing. For the seasoned theatergoer who has yet to experience it before it is well worth it. If you are new to theater, the play also allows those who are less sure how they feel about theater an opportunity to experience live human storytelling in a way they may have not experienced it in the past.