It’s probably hard to imagine three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Edward Albee — a Montauk fixture until his death in 2016 and one of the most famous playwrights of the 20th century — having his first play, “The Zoo Story,” summarily rejected by producers.
But then again, he did write it in just three weeks.
This now groundbreaking two-hander — which takes place on a park bench in Central Park and explores themes of loneliness, isolation, territoriality, and personal discovery — will be produced in East Hampton by Guild Hall, directed by Red Bull Theater’s Nathan Winkelstein and starring Ryan Spahn and Michael Urie, two actors with impressive credits who are also life partners off the stage.
The staged reading that is being produced at Guild Hall is actually two plays — the one-act “The Zoo Story,” which was Albee’s first work, and “Homelife,” which Albee penned in 2004 as his penultimate work and offers a prequel to “Zoo Story.” The two together form what is now the two-act “At Home at the Zoo,” which also features actress Sophie Van Haselberg, Bette Midler’s daughter.
“The Zoo Story” offers a real-time look at two men meeting for the first time. Peter, an unassuming and successful publishing executive, is reading a book, on a bench, in Central Park when he is approached by Jerry — intense and enigmatic. Rather than pushing one another away these two strangers have a profound and life-changing moment of connection.
“Homelife” shows Peter at home with his wife, Ann, and ends with him going to read a book in Central Park.
Christopher Wallenburg of The Boston Globe wrote in 2011, “Over the years, he’d [Albee] always had a nagging feeling that something was missing from the piece’s unsettling encounter between two very different men on a Central Park bench . . . Albee said: ‘The Zoo Story’ is a good play. It’s a play that I’m very happy I wrote. But it’s a play with one-and-a-half characters. Jerry is a fully developed, three-dimensional character. But Peter is a backboard. He’s not fully developed. Peter had to be more fleshed out.’”
The theater community was surprised that Albee circled back to “Zoo Story” half a century later, but even more surprising was Albee’s decision to no longer allow “The Zoo Story” to be professionally performed solo — it had to be paired with the newer work (non-professional and college theaters were off the hook). Albee publicly said that the play was his to do with as he pleased.
An interesting note in honor of Guild Hall’s 90th anniversary — Albee, a longtime fixture on the East End, was among the earliest members of Guild Hall’s Academy of the Arts, and received an Academy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991. He also served one season as the artistic director of Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater.
JDT’s current artistic director, Josh Gladstone, had this to offer: “Edward Albee is one of the most celebrated artists to have ever been involved with Guild Hall, so it’s fitting that this genius playwright, Lifetime Achievement Member of our Academy of the Arts, and one-time Artistic Director of our John Drew Theater be represented in our 90th Anniversary season. This seminal play, a mix of Albee’s earliest and most recent work — two acts bookending his career — will be three nights of dark, funny, and very poignant theater at Guild Hall.”
“The Zoo Story” can be seen August 13 to 15. Tickets are available at guildhall.org.
