Edward Albee’s ‘At Home at the Zoo’ is vivid theater

I’ve always thought of Edward Albee as a mixed bag.

On the plus side, his plays reflect the brainy theatricality of a guy who writes expressly for the stage, he creates great roles for gifted actors and he crafts some of the funniest acerbic dialogue you’ll hear.

Those qualities are certainly present in Kansas City Actors Theatre’s strong production of Albee’s “At Home at the Zoo,” which showcases splendid performances by Brian Paulette, Jessalyn Kincaid and Forrest Attaway.

On the other hand, Albee writes with a sort of cerebral smugness and seems to take satisfaction in obscuring the actual meaning of his plays. You’ll see a bit of that in “At Home at the Zoo” as well.

This piece, directed by Doug Weaver, is basically two stitched-together one-acts. The first, originally called “Homelife,” dates to about 2004 and depicts an arch conversation between a New York couple, the restless Ann (Kincaid) and her husband, the dispassionate Peter (Paulette), a publisher of textbooks who as the act begins is working his way through a 700-page manuscript he describes “as the most boring book we’ve ever published … and the most important.”

Ann and Peter share a life measured in pairs: two daughters, two cats, two parakeets. Everything is satisfactory, if unexciting. But Ann hungers for a bit of chaos, a dash of madness. She thinks they should occasionally release themselves to animalistic sex.

After a revelatory conversation, in which they seem to reach a new level of honesty, she goes back to cooking, and Peter grabs a book — Stephen King’s “ 11/22/63” — and heads to Central Park.

That’s where, in Act 2, he meets a disturbed eccentric named Jerry (Attaway). This is “The Zoo Story,” Albee’s one-act written in the late ’50s that put him on the theatrical map. Albee revised the piece to make it part of “At Home at the Zoo,” but it still retains its central tension: the garrulous but vaguely threatening Jerry spinning bizarre anecdotes about the marginal apartment building in which he resides.

The guarded Peter is slowly drawn in by the force of Jerry’s personality and his blizzard of words.

It is no criticism of Paulette or Kincaid to say that Attaway dominates this production. Paulette has a particularly challenging task: to reveal the inner life of a repressed guy who values an orderly life. The actor plays the role beautifully and finds opportunities to integrate his formidable comedic abilities into the performance.

Kincaid goes for straight naturalism and impresses the viewer with convincing behavioral details, little surprises and moments of raw intensity.

But Attaway inhabits Jerry to a degree that is simply stunning. Jerry is a force of nature, and Attaway imbues him with nervous tics and stutter-step line readings that never do violence to Albee’s language. Albee gives Jerry long monologues that in Attaway’s hands feel spontaneous and alive.

Jerry is a unique character — as seductive as he is repellant — who exemplifies Albee’s remarkable theatrical imagination.

At the end of the day, “At Home at the Zoo” is a meditation on the self, among other things. Albee questions whether any of us can know who we really are until it’s too late. That’s worth contemplating, no less so than experiencing serious theater performed by committed actors.

This story was originally published September 13, 2015 at 11:54 AM with the headline "Edward Albee’s ‘At Home at the Zoo’ is vivid theater."