The Zoo Story

As the capacity crowd filed out of The Zoo Story last night, I heard one scholarly-looking individual remark to his date, "Wasn't that a great play?"

"Oh, yes," she replied politely, "but what did it all mean?"

Her answer pointed up the real fault in this first play of the critically acclaimed "new O'Neill," Edward Albee. The Zoo Story has no point. It isn't really a play, but more a tour de force or extended joke, like Last Year at Marienbad. You can almost see Albee laughing at all the conflicting disseminations of his meaning that have been produced. One of the two characters in the play expresses Albee's weltanschauung clearly: "What are you trying to do, bring sense out of things?"

The action is tauntingly simple. A pleasant fellow named Peter is sitting on a bench in Central Park one Sunday afternoon when up comes an unpleasant youth named Jerry. "I've been to the zoo," the newcomer offers, then insinuates himself upon the helpless victim in an effort to establish genuine communication. He ends with a long story about his unsuccessful attempt to make friends with a dog by half killing it. Seeing that his efforts to reach Peter are also a failure, Jerry offers himself as a sacrificial dog, impaling himself on a knife he has dared the older man to hold. His death proves nothing, except that such real communications are hard to achieve.

The play is really a dialogue without a topic. The Zoo Story would be more successful as the straight comedy skit, which it seems to be at the opening, than the pseudo-tragedy it becomes.

The Loeb's production is saved by the near-flawlessness of the actors, two of the best players in Cambridge Samuel Abbott's Peter is the epitome of complacency provoked; his pouts, frowns, and enraged outbursts are so natural that any facial manipulations from him produce gales of unanticipated laughter. To Abbott falls the more difficult of the two parts, for he must maintain his characterization and the audience's sympathy during long periods of silence, a task which he carries out particularly well during Jerry's monologue on the dog.

Andreas Teuber uses quick, nervous gestures and rapid-fire speech to see off the instability of Jerry's mind. He is thoroughly convincing, though his delivery snows under an occasional Albee gem. He and Abbott would be a hard team to beat on any stage.

The set is childish, and the lighting leaves shadows all over the stage, but these minor faults are transcended by the quality of the acting. Everyone with any interest in modern theater should make an effort to see this production. The diehards, who maintain that there is a deep significance in such trifles, will more than appreciate the performance. Those uninitiated into Albee's world will learn that the idea is not untarnished, yet applaud and excellence of acting seldom seen on he college stages.