REVIEW: 1 more 5 out of 5 MASTER of the Fringe!
The Zoo Story (Stage 17), like Charlie Brown, Little Shop of Horrors and almost anything by Daniel MacIvor, is a hardy Fringe perennial that keeps coming back. And why not? It’s a challenging little gem written in his youth by Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) on his way to theatrical glory. All it requires is a small set (a park bench), a couple of good actors and a sympathetic director.
It has certainly found that in this polished production from Edmonton’s Bedlam Theatre Concern. It is also a welcome back to a Fringe stage for two actors, Collin Doyle and James Hamilton, who have distinguished themselves in a number of local productions over the years. They have worked closely together so often they seem to have developed a timing that verges on Vulcan mind meld.
Add to that the sure directorial hand of Bradley Moss (long-time artistic director of Theatre Network) and Albee’s confounding Rubik Cube of a play becomes an accessible linguistic and emotional thriller.
“I’ve been to the zoo,” says Jerry (Collin Doyle), innocently enough to Peter (James Hamilton), who is sitting on a park bench reading a book, somewhere in deep Central Park.
Peter is a successful publisher, father and husband. He’s optimistic, reserved and somewhat inhibited. Jerry is a misanthrope – perpetually turned off by society and all it has to offer. He’s the embodiment of Albee’s lifelong feeling that all human endeavour is an unwinnable battle for dominance. As the playwright’s spokesman, Jerry gets all the best lines. At times the play is his long dramatic monologue.
Doyle is a stunning example of fierce concentration and growing menace. The actor begins haltingly with a fixed smile and the groveling supplication of an Eastern street beggar. He desperately wants to be liked, or even to converse with, a fellow human being. He vaguely frightens Peter, but an unlikely bond develops. Slowly this fine actor ratchets up the intensity until he is in complete command. Peter (and the audience) sit in stunned silence. The outside clamour of the Fringe drops away and we are in an electric energy field surrounding that remote bench in Central Park.
No wonder Doyle was nominated for a Sterling Award the last time the two performed this play in 2002.
Doyle is mesmerizing and Hamilton is transfixed – the performer turning the act of listening into an art form. It’s an old actor’s trick – and it sure works – you sit so still that after a while people begin to marvel at and share your fascination.
Then Albee performs his old absurdist writer’s trick – he turns the whole thing around in a second – and menace is suddenly in the air. All that has gone before is but prelude to what happens next. The ending is unexpected but was inevitable right from the first tentative words delivered in the play.
Gripping.
5 out of 5
