Playwright: Edward Albee. At: InnateVolution Theater Productions at the Oracle studio, 3809 N. Broadway. Phone: 312-513-1415; $20 suggested donation. Runs through: Aug. 9
For nearly half a century, Edward Albee's Zoo Story has been almost a rite of passage for young American male theater artists. Easy to stage ( the setting is a bench in a public park ) , minimal in plot ( a stranger provokes another into a primal confrontation ) and anchored by a nice, chewy monologue ( self-consciously labeled by the speaker, "The Story of Jerry and the Dog" ) offering innumerable opportunities for showcasing actorly skills, this deceptively simple one-act exercise has become a staple of classroom and post-classroom ensembles.
But just when you think that nothing new can be found in Albee's microcosmic assessment of his society, along comes a production like this InnateVolution Theater debut: for starters, director Toma Tavares Langston places the domesticated Peterinitially, a passive audience to the antics of the intrusive Jerrydownstage and full-front, where we must perceive, at all times, his response to verbal and, later, physical attack. Further visual stimulus is provided by the introduction into the stage picture of several auxiliary players, representing the characters described in Jerry's account of his Boschean environment ( including the aforementioned canine ) .
But this doesn't mean that Casey Chapman ( one of the storefront circuit's hidden treasures ) is allowed to slacken in his provocatorial duties as the "permanent transient" desperate to connect with Raymond K. Cleveland's bookish family man. With meticulous care, Chapman delves each phrase, each wordeach syllableof his text to find significant insights frequently surprising, occasionally vulgar, but always fresh and clearly-motivated, even to seasoned playgoers who can recite Albee in their sleep. The results are an hour-long demonstration of tag-team artistry at its purest.
After such fireworks, however, its afterpiece, The Sandbox, comes as something of a letdown, despite a peppery performance by Patricia Tinsley in the role of an elderly lady abandoned by her kinfolk on the titular playground beach. The conceit of presenting the brief ( barely 30 minutes ) scenario as an old-fashioned television comedycomplete with live studio-audience laugh tracktoo often obstructs, rather than facilitates, our comprehension of why this play is so often paired with Zoo Story, both foreshadowing a theme that would reappear throughout Albee's 50-years-and-counting career.