At Home At the Zoo by Edward Albee

Albee wrote the second act of this play in 1958. Titled The Zoo Story, it tells the story of a chance meeting between Peter, an executive at a New York publishing company who leads a fairly sheltered existence. Peter is sitting on a bench reading a book in Central Park when he is interrupted by Jerry, an unstable self-proclaimed transient who longs to have "a real conversation" with someone. Peter reluctantly obliges.

The first act, written by Albee in 2004 to better fill out Peter's character, gives us a glimpse into Peter's home life, his relationship with his wife, two daughters and two parakeets. Although not as dramatic as the second act, it is charming, funny, and does give us a better sense for how sheltered Peter's existence really is.

The play overall was pretty good. The acting was solid, and the minimalist set design was striking. There was a little too much monologue in the second act for me, and I actually would love to see a third act in which we see the effect of the conversation with Jerry was on Peter when he goes back to his life. Right now, it feels like an unfinished thought.

Boleros for the Disenchanted at the A.C.T. Theater

This was the second of our series of three plays that we bought as a package at the A.C.T. Theater in downtown San Francisco. I'm not a connoisseur of theater by any means, but we like to go a couple times a year, usually because I recognize the play's author.

Boleros for the Disenchanted was written by Jose Rivera, who penned the screenplay for The Motorcycle Diaries. Boleros is based on his parents' relationship. The story takes place in two acts. In Act I, we see how the young couple, Flora and Eusebio, meet and fall in love in Puerto Rico in the early 1950s. Act II then skips ahead to Alabama in the 90s and we see their lives after 40 years of marriage. The play is about love idealized, the fantasy version, and love in reality--the long term, sickness with the health, bad with the good kind of love.

Overall, it was pretty good. The acting was strong, and actors played different roles in Act I and Act II, adding another level of complexity and symbolism (for example, the actor who played the young Eusebio in Act I appears as a priest in Act II to read old Eusebio his last rites). The parallel structure of the two acts worked well, but seemed a little heavy-handed with the theme. Still, there's very little else I could criticize in the play.