When it comes to timelessness in playwrights, the gold standard is Shakespeare. So flexible, goodness knows – but then there’s that language, beautiful but clearly dated. Ibsen? The misogyny, so painful to watch, but thankfully from another time. (At least we hope so.)
So it was interesting to realize that St. Louis Actors’ Studio’s opening presentation this season is a pair of one-act two-handers that date from before most Americans were born. And there’s only one giveaway to their age. SLAS has placed the show in the capable hands of veteran director Wayne Salomon.
Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story takes place in Central Park, where Peter (William Roth), a successful Upper East Side resident, is quietly reading on a park bench. Up wanders Jerry (Joel Moses) – and since it’s Albee, you know the fireworks will start quickly. Jerry’s been to the zoo and wants to talk about it. Peter, following New York style, wants minimal interaction with this guy. Jerry’s nervous. Or something. Joel Moses’ Jerry is as mesmerizing as a snake who keeps coiling and uncoiling. Is he crazy-malevolent or merely malevolent? How much of his story is true? What does he really want? Peter seems as hypnotized as we are. Well, for a while.
From across the pond comes The Dumb Waiter, an early work from Harold Pinter. A couple of yobs with working-class British accents are on cots (in the American sense of the word, not baby cribs, the British usage) in what seems to be a basement. They’re waiting for the word to finish an assignment, apparently a murder of some sort. They’ve done this before. As we meet them, Ben (William Roth), fully dressed, reads a newspaper. Gus (Joel Moses), the younger guy, has his tie untied, shirt tail out and is putting on his shoes after a nap, a particularly fine bit of wordless physical comedy. Still, this is Pinter, so there’s some fine wordplay, too. Even the title – dumb as in mute? Dumb as in not smart? Waiter waiting on tables or waiting for something to happen? Patrick Huber’s fine and extremely versatile set even gives us what is almost a third character in the basement.
Moses is clearly an actor to keep one’s eye on. It’s only his second St. Louis appearance onstage – he did the Aphra Behn Festival in 2020 – but he steps right up and owns the parts, particularly in Zoo Story. For Roth, his unshakeability in both plays becomes intriguingly frayed in the Albee and we see it balancing off the craziness of the Jerry character. Salomon is directing them like Leonard Slatkin handles his baton.
What? The dated thing? Both these edge-of-your-seat plays were written and opened in the late 1950’s, The Zoo Story in 1958 and The Dumb Waiter from 1957. The single thing that dated them, to my ear, was Roth’s Peter in Zoo Story admitting to Jerry that his salary – which kept up an apartment big enough for his wife, two daughters, and their pets in the Upper East Side of Manhattan – was $18,000 a year. Another commonality? Both were considered so radical at the time that they weren’t first performed in their countries of origin. The Pinter opened in Frankfurt, the Albee in Berlin. (And for trivia buffs, the original off-Broadway company in New York, ca. 1960, had William Daniels as Peter and George Maharis as Jerry.)
A fascinating, amazing double feature.
The Zoo Story/The Dumb Waiter
through October 3, 2021
St. Louis Actors’ Studio
Gaslight Theatre
360 N. Boyle
314-458-2978
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