ARTS . Theater Review

Age Spots


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Published: Apr 1, 2009

Attention, baby boomers: tick tock. Edward Albee's The Zoo Story — America's most famous one-act — just turned 50. But Zoo wears its years lightly. The story of Peter and Jerry, two dissimilar guys whose meeting in Central Park takes unexpected turns, still has the muscularity and directness, the sense of dangerous male energy that made it a favorite. Most of all, the piece is brilliantly disorienting. Every moment comes out of the blue. So what possessed Albee, in the twilight of his career, to add an explanatory prologue play? The newish one — Homelife, written in 2004 — and Zoo Story now comprise a single evening.

Homelife shows us Peter just before he enters the park. He sits in his elegant Manhattan apartment with his attractive wife, Ann, and with great civility they fail to communicate. Everything about Homelife — the subject matter, the suffocating archness, the aren't-I-clever? word games — are tiresome Albee clichés. (If you want to see him do this brilliantly, try A Delicate Balance.) Homelife doesn't enhance Zoo Story — it detracts from it by conventionalizing the play, and making Peter the protagonist in what should be a more equally drawn battle. T. Scott Cunningham makes Peter's stilted dialogue sound natural, but he's curiously generic. Susan McKey, her lips pursed in an expression of perpetual dissatisfaction, is a charmless Ann, and fails to make Albee's language sound like more than an exercise.

Stranger still is Robinson's take on Zoo Story. What usually feels scary is gentle here, much of it played for laughs. Jerry is traditionally characterized by a combination of creepiness and charisma — but here he's played (skillfully by Andrew Polk) as a needy schlump. Likewise, Peter (Cunningham again) seems sweetly befuddled rather than increasingly fearful. I'll give Robinson points for some novel rethinking. And it may be that this is the way to do Zoo Story when it's anchored — and "civilized" — by Homelife. But it has lost a lot. If not quite a petting zoo, PTC's At Home at the Zoo is certainly declawed.

At Home at the Zoo | Through April 19, $46-$59, Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S. Broad St., 215-985-0420, philadelphiatheatrecompany.org