'Zoo' times two

Riverwalk’s excellent Albee double feature is splendidly played

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Here’s a challenging and convoluted notion: Write a one-act play, and then 45 years later write a prequel that helps explain the motivation of one of the central characters.

Yep — this is Edward Albee’s new and expanded version of “The Zoo Story,” in which the central character of Peter, portrayed in this Riverwalk Theatre production by Doak Bloss, comes to know why he acted the way he did in the one-act play of so many years ago.

“At Home at the Zoo” begins in the Upper East Side apartment of Peter and Ann, with Ann, (Marni Darr Holmes) leading her mild-mannered husband through an increasingly deep conversation about soul-searching intimacies and existential emptiness, about safety and security, as opposed to adventure and risk.

Albee’s words are as crisp as nighttime thunder in this first act, and insights follow like the brilliance of lightning in the sky. Holmes’ manner is surgically precise and cuts through the casual everyday banalities of a long-standing relationship to a core of uncomfortable uncertainty that urges Peter to reveal things about himself that he has long kept silent. Holmes displays impeccable timing in the delivery of her lines, and Bloss responds in kind, creating a dance of pseudo-intimacy in which their words wrap around each other and draw them into  a surface- scratching sexual attraction that has been long missing in their relationship. 

Act One ends with a casually stated inclination by Peter that he is going to wander over to the park, sit in the sun and read a book.

Act Two — the original “Zoo Story” — begins with Peter at the park, encountering Jerry (Eric Dawe), seemingly a slightly lost and bubbly soul who has just come from the zoo. His overly engaging manner interrupts Peter’s reading, and increasingly involves Peter in a twisty one-sided conversation; Jerry is, to say the least, all over the map, emotionally.

Effervescence begins to transform into a kind of insanity that is common on the streets of New York, and the resolution is inconclusive. Bloss, while relegated to the role of being a struggling listener in this act, does so with great tense discomfort, while Dawe pulls out all the stops and emotes volumes of crazy stories with abandonment and no restraint whatsoever.

Clearly, these are three of Lansing’s finest dramatic actors. Given a play with richly textured language to enjoy, they each deliver some of their own personal best performances to date.

The plays leave the audience with more than a handful of unanswerable questions, chief of which is how did an actor playing Peter in the original "Zoo Story" know how to structure his part before there was a backstory on which to build?

“At Home at the Zoo” is an intense tango of tangled emotions and turmoil, as the actors and writer circle each other in ever-tightening circles. It’s a sheer delight for the audience to observe.


’At Home at the Zoo’ and ’The Zoo Story’
Riverwalk Theatre
218 Museum Drive, Lansing
Through May 22
 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays
$14 general admission; $12 seniors, students and military personnel
(517) 482-5700
www.riverwalktheatre.com


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