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At Home At The Zoo
Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo is playing at the Signature Theatre located at 480 West 42nd Street. It runs two hours fifteen minutes with one intermission. It closes on March 11, 2018.
Act one The Zoo Story is also called Home Life written in 1959.
The world premiered was in June 2004 at the Hartford Stage in Connecticut. It opened off Broadway at the Second Stage on November 11, 2007 and closed on December 30, 2007. Both were directed by Pam MacKinnon.
Edward Albee was born on March 12, 1928 and died on September 16, 2016.
In 2005 he received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement . He also won two Tony Awards for The Goat or Who is Sylvia? (2002) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1963). Edward was nominated for five Tony Awards for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (revival 2005), Seascape (1975), A Delicate Balance (1967), Tiny Alice (1965) and The Ballad of the Sad Café (1964). He was also won three Pulitzer Prizes for Drama for Three Tall Women (1994), Seascape (1975) and A Delicate Balance (1967) an was nominated for two Pulitzer for Drama for The Goat or Who is Sylvia? (2003) and The Play About Baby (2001).
Robert Sean Leonard won a Tony Award in 2001 for The Invention of Love and was nominated for two Tony Awards for Long Day’s Journey into Night (203) and Candida (1993).
Kate Finneran won two Tony Awards for Promises, Promises (2010) and Noises Off (2002)
Paul Sparks was nominated for three Drama Desk Awards for Dusk Rings a Bell (2011), Essential Self-Defense (2007) and Orange Flower Water (2005). He was nominated for a Primetime Emmy in 2016 for House of Cards.
The place is New York City.
Ann (Katie Finneran) comes into the living room telling her husband Peter (Robert Sean Leonard) I have something to tell you. He’s busy reading a book. When she finally gets his attention she has forgotten what she wanted to say. We learn they have two daughter, a cat and two parakeets. They are a conversation on several things including two different sexual things. When they have finished their conversation Peter decides he going out to read a book on a bench in the park.
Act two Peter is reading a different book then before. He is in Central Park when he is approached by Jerry (Paul Sparks). He seems homeless and keeps repeating I’ve been to the zoo. Jerry questions Peter about himself. Peter turns it back on Jerry to find out something about him. He lives in a room on the top floor in a brownstone on the upper west side. Jerry tells him about his landlady and her dog. After he has his finished with his tale he sits on the bench and insists Peter get off. Peter refuses!
What happens, you will have to see the play.
The set is bare. The walls have like scratch marks on the. Act one there is a chair, ottoman and lamp there are five park benches in act two the same walls are used but is more opened.
Paul Sparks does an outstanding performance.
The second act is the best, it has more impact. The first is good but not as strong. But as I left I felt empty, the has play had no effect on me good or bad.
Review by Rozanna Radakovich.
Photos by Annazor.
To read a candid interview with the cast, scroll down to photos. Click on photos for this and other shows.