Zoo+Story

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** The Zoo Story by Edward Albee  ** Review from Impact Magazine: The Zoo Story: Anything but tame! We join Peter (Theo Taptiklis)- an affable, academic looking sort- on a park bench in New York, quietly reading on a Sunday afternoon until he is interrupted by a stranger bent on a conversation. The situation is familiar to all of us- we make our judgements (friendly loner or lunatic?) and decide to be friendly… but not too friendly. Perhaps that’s why we begin by identifying with Peter- the sane man on the bench- and not Jerry (Magnus McCullugh)- the nervy one stalking around it. Perhaps that’s why when we see Peter dissected and provoked out of his polite complacency, the attack feels so personal. If this performance is a zoo and we the day trippers, Jerry is the lion who makes the fences seem flimsy by vaulting over to munch on a startled passer- by.
 * @ Nottingham New Theatre, 14th-17th March 2006 **

Buzzing with nervous energy, from his first entrance Jerry’s combination of boyish vulnerability and unhinged zeal have Peter pinned to his bench and us to our seats. As he tells his strange, violent and often surreal stories we are transported by force of description away from the park and into his claustrophobic world, so that much of the play seems to unfold in a cramped apartment block redolent with the odour of unwashed landlady… Jerry forces his audience to take a new perspective on “the greatest city in the world. Amen”, showing us the divisions which have kept its lighter and darker side apart.

An arresting performance of sometimes astonishing intensity, McCullugh pulls off the psychological acrobatics of his character with an energy which never falters. By turns cringing then bullying, darkly entertaining and poetic, terrifying yet sympathetic, McCullugh’s Jerry is the perfect foil to Taptiklis’s Peter, an expert portrait of middle-class solidity in collapse. Albee specializes in verbal taunting, and here the battle as Jerry transforms his listener from ‘vegetable’ to ‘animal’ is electrifying.

By a rather twisted logic, our initial sympathies become confused: Jerry is a kind of hero and Peter the villain. Albee, one senses, is on the side of the mad dog and not of tame parakeets. Perhaps the most surprising feature of this play is that under the twisted power dynamics, distorted logic and devastating plot developments there is an appeal, albeit an aggressive one, for understanding and connection in a world turned sterile. Twanging with tension from the start, this is a production which will reel you in so close that its explosive finale will have you picking shrapnel from your skin on the way out of the auditorium.

|| || || || || Guy Unsworth || James Herbert ||
 * Jerry || Magnus McCullagh
 * Peter || Theo Taptiklis
 * Director || Charlie Brafman
 * Director || Charlie Brafman
 * Producer || Elle Hosie
 * Set Design
 * Tech || Matt Leventhall
 * Sound || James Ledbetter ||







=Theater review: 'The Zoo Story'=

By Chuck Graham
Tucson Citizen //February 2, 2009// John Shartzer (left) as Jerry and Nic Adams as Peter star in Albee's "The Zoo Story." (Credit: Dave Adams, courtesy of Rogue Theatre and The Now Theatre) Economic inequalities were percolating as television screens popped up everywhere and sophisticated advertising techniques hooked their messages into an innocent public psyche. People who had no material wealth were suddenly reminded of their empty lives by the visions of plenty on every one of those flickering TV screens. It was not a good feeling. Seeing themselves as losers in a land of plenty, these economically underprivileged had no place to go. Shut out by a lack of education, without the means to participate in this new materialism, they felt shut out. Or shut in. They were caged up like those animals in the zoo, kept away from the mainstream, looked at from a distance by those who were more prosperous. If Albee would write this one-act, 50-minute play of confrontation between today's haves and have-nots, racial tension would be an essential part. These days, life seemed so simple 50 years ago. There were no race riots, no rampant drug use. Marriage still had sanctity. Everyone genuinely believed America was the greatest country in the world. The thrill of victory in World War II was still fresh in the air. Those Freedom Riders in Mississippi? They were college kids making the country better by encouraging everyone to get out the vote. Or so it seemed. Nic Adams, in shiny shoes and a sleeveless sweater, plays Peter, the staunchly middle-class man proud of his accomplishments in earning a respectable living and providing for his respectable family. John Shartzer is Jerry, the intuitive street hustler who survives in a world of transients by using his passive-aggressive personality to intimidate those who are less secure. In a more equal world, Jerry could have been a slick salesman applying devious skills to sell any of the amazing new products that poured out of the country's inventive imagination. Only, that didn't happen. Jerry knows he's a bright guy, but keeps bumping his head against the underside of life. By the time we see him onstage, the frustration has been growing for years. Like a suicide bomber, he wants revenge. He wants to hurt this cruel society that keeps him caged up like the once-proud lions of Africa's plains trapped in a zoo. Jerry wants to do some damage and is willing to give up his own life to do that. But first Jerry must find his victim. He will pick one carefully who represents all the middle-class values Jerry longs to have. Back in the 1950s, men had comfortable homes and loving families. They earned the money and the wives spent it wisely. Each man belonged someplace, had a warm place to go at the end of each day. Jerry doesn't have any of that. Carefully he approaches Peter sitting alone on a green bench on a warm Sunday afternoon in Central Park. Carefully, Jerry makes sure Peter does indeed have such a family—and the household pets who are an extension of the animals in the zoo. In the beginning Peter is proud of his accomplishments. He puffs up politely in describing his executive job and his lovely family. Too late, Peter realizes these very accomplishments have marked him for trouble with Jerry.
 * The history:** Can a play about social tensions of 50 years ago still engage us today? Edward Albee wrote "The Zoo Story" in 1958, creating an off-Broadway sensation with his insistence that trouble was lurking beneath the glowing optimism of those Fabulous 50s.
 * The production:** We can see all this in the clean-cut production of "The Zoo Story" in Rogue Theatre's new late-night series of shows presented in association with The Now Theatre in the Cabaret Theatre at the [|**Temple of Music and Art**]. Chelsea Bowdren has directed a straightforward performance that makes no judgment calls.