Jan 2, 2010

The Oxford Dictionary of Plays | The Zoo Story

Zoo Story, The

Author: Edward Albee

First Performance: 1959, Berlin; 1960, New York

Published: 1960

Genre: Drama in 1 act

Setting: Central Park, New York, c.1958

Cast: 2m

Peter, a publisher in his early forties, is sitting on a park bench reading a book as he does every Sunday afternoon. Jerry, a scruffy individual in his late thirties, enters and strikes up a conversation with Peter, announcing that he has come from the zoo and that Peter will ‘see it on TV tonight’. He probes Peter's life and establishes that Peter has a settled bourgeois existence, married with two daughters, owner of parakeets and cats. By contrast, Jerry has no family and lives in a tiny room in a brownstone rooming house. His ‘fat, ugly, mean, stupid’ landlady lusts after him, and her dog always tries to bite him. So Jerry...

[The entire page is 378 words long]

The Oxford Dictionary of Plays | The Zoo Story

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