Reviews

An Evening of Albee

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QUEEN ANNE NEWS

http://www.pacificpublishingcompany.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=19315793&BRD=855&PAG=461&dept_id=517907&rfi=8

Happy birthday, Edward Albee

February 20, 2008

By Nancy Worssam

Every once in a while you see a stage performance that is so riveting, so incredibly right on, that you are stunned by its power. There's one of those performances in Stone Soup Theatre's current production of two short plays by Edward Albee.

As Jerry in "The Zoo Story," Alex Samuels shuffles onto the small stage with a three-day beard, hair unkempt, shirt hanging out from unpressed trousers and dirty red Converse high tops on his feet. Stumbling into and past a garbage can, he stops before the well-groomed Peter (J.D. Lloyd), who sits on a park bench reading. Jerry begins a conversation that can't end well.

The scene is set near the zoo in Central Park. Peter is a cultured, solid member of the upper middle class, taking a break from his busy week. Jerry clearly is not of his class, nor of his sound mind.

Samuels has the right New York street accent, the right look and an increasingly frightening persona. His opening lines are, "I've been to the Zoo. You'll read about it tomorrow in the papers." Eventually we'll find out what that means; now it just seems part of his instability, hinting as it does at something untoward. "Mind if I ask you a few questions? Every once in a while, I like to talk."

And so he does. Jerry grills the fastidious Peter, who for his part seems riveted to his bench by politeness, or perhaps disbelief. Then Jerry launches into a stream-of-conscious outpouring-about cats eating birds, his attempt to kill his landlady's dog and class differences exemplified by descriptions of the people at the bottom of the social scale, the ones Peter would never know.

This is powerhouse theatre, beautifully directed by Mary Machala. As Peter, Lloyd provides a perfect foil for Samuels' deranged Jerry. He is dressed for his part in argyle socks and the casual business attire typically found in New York publishing houses in the 1950s, when the play was first produced. Lloyd effectively expresses the noblesse oblige so many in his character's social class exhibit toward the "less fortunate."

As with many Albee plays, this production explores issues of class in the United States. In "The Zoo Story," however, Albee is asking us to consider issues of alienation and loneliness as well.

"Finding the Sun," the program's other one-act, is not as effective. Stone Soup's stage is quite small, and productions with small casts work best in such a space. But there are eight characters in "Finding the Sun," and when they are all on stage at the same time, it's just too crowded.

Another problem is the fact that the play is just not as compelling as "The Zoo Story," despite the fact that it was written a quarter century later. It's themes are familiar ones for Albee, addressing issues that have haunted his life and his work: love, aging, mortality and living with the choices we make in life

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A Trilogy of Terror

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SEATTLE WEEKLY

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2007-10-31/arts/opening-night-pericles-trilogy-of-terror.php

Opening Night: Pericles, Trilogy of Terror

October 31, 2007

By RICHARD MORIN

Stone Soup Theatre's tiny performance space [...] engenders an uncommon intimacy between watchers and watched that can be an actor's best friend.

Witness Eric Riedmann's performance as the mentally dislodged narrator of Edgar Allan Poe's classic horror story "The Tell-Tale Heart." [...] He perfectly captures the high-strung, erudite madness of Poe's writing; his words gush out in an avalanche of horrible self-delusion and acute suffering, and his body is coiled tightly, ready to spring forth at the slightest provocation. Director Julie Beckman uses minimalistic lighting and an offstage chorus of terrifying whispers to create a wonderfully tense atmosphere of foreboding that mirrors and exacerbates the narrator's inner turmoil.

Opening the trilogy is Lucille Fletcher's short study in alienation and murder, "Sorry, Wrong Number." [...] Stone Soup founder and artistic director Maureen Miko takes the lead role as the invalid Mrs. Stevenson, a nervous, neurotic kvetch whose only connection to the outside world is through her bedside telephone. Here the theater's diminutiveness works almost too well: Mrs. Stevenson, after accidentally overhearing a two-way phone conversation that may or may not reveal her hubby's plot to off her, spends most of the play caterwauling into the phone, and Miko plays her to the hilt, her voice pitched in a loud, high, warbling whine.

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