The Zoo Story — a one-act, two-character play by now-canonical American playwright Edward Albee, now running at New Haven Theater Company through March 7 — is a short, sharp shock to the system. It begins when Jerry (Trevor Williams) approaches Peter (J. Kevin Smith), who is sitting on a bench in Central Park in New York City, reading.
“I’ve been to the zoo,” Jerry says. Peter, engrossed in reading, doesn’t hear him. Jerry repeats himself. Peter still doesn’t notice. Then Jerry gets a little hostile. “Mister, I’ve been to the zoo!” he says.
“I’m sorry, were you talking to me?” Peter says.
Jerry seems all too eager to talk to Peter. Peter is just as eager to somehow extricate himself from a conversation with Jerry. There are laughs wrung from this situation, but also a distinct undercurrent of menace. If we think of Jerry as the aggressor and Peter as the target of Jerry’s verbal aggression, it’s easy to side with Peter, even though he doesn’t say very much. Jerry keeps asking Peter questions about his life — what he does for a living, how large his family is — and Peter obliges, out of politeness, even as he grows increasingly uncomfortable. For a time in The Zoo Story, the source of the tension is that Jerry is extracting information from Peter while offering none in return. But then Jerry starts to talk about himself, his own past, his living conditions. He talks a lot, and it makes it worse. Jerry finally enters into a state of monologue as he talks about his encounters with a hostile dog in the building where he lives — and his decision to poison it. It seems clear that Jerry is at least a little unstable, and maybe at that point we feel for Peter the most. That, as it turns out, is a trap.
The New Haven Theater Company is possibly the best kind of place in which to see a play like The Zoo Story, co-directed ably and forcefully by George Kulp and Steven Scarpa. To begin with, the company made its already-small space even smaller by moving the seating into a very tight box around the park bench where the action happens. Those in the front row may find themselves within a foot of one or the other of the actors on occasion. It works. It lets the actors crawl that much more into the play’s mounting sense of claustrophobia. The quiet moments can be that much quieter; the loud moments have more of a jolt.
J. Kevin Smith plays the beleaguered Peter quite perfectly as he gradually sheds the veneer of upper-crust civility he starts with. It’s also worth watching him as he receives Jerry’s longer speeches; his nonverbal responses affect our own reactions to what we’re hearing. However, as Jerry, Trevor Williams must and does carry the play. Jerry is a complex character — smart, observant, fragile, overwhelmed by how much he thinks and feels. At each moment in the play, he’s someone who needs taking care of and someone to watch out for; he might well do harm to himself and others. Williams pours Jerry’s character into every line, and his volatile performance in such a small space puts the audience on that park bench with Peter. This makes the ending — which I will not give away, and which I advise you not to look up if you don’t know the play already — hit that much harder.
The Zoo Story isn’t the play that made Albee famous — that would be Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — but Albee’s mastery of the form is on full display. Brought to nervous, dangerous life by the New Haven Theater Company, The Zoo Story will likely leave you reeling, and thinking.
The Zoo Story runs at New Haven Theater Company, 839 Chapel St., through March 7. Visit the company’s website for tickets, showtimes, and more information.
