When Albee's The Zoo Story debuted half a century ago it was paired with Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape." It became an enduring "hit" and it was frequently produces as part of an evening of two one-acts. Its most frequent partner was another Albee play, The American Dream, and occasionally The Sand Box (both of which, as Simon Saltzman noted, are being paired and revived under Albee's direction at the Cherry Lane Theater).

Six years ago, the Williamstown Theater Festival presented a very short run of a double bill that featured "The Zoo Story" and Harold Pinter's "The Dumbwaiter" which premiered around the same time. That double bill struck me as a very organic match since its spiritual matchmaker was clearly Samuel Beckett, the man in whose footsteps both Albee and Pinter have walked. Like Beckett's Waiting For Godot, both The Zoo Story and Dumb Waiter revolve around two characters whose often hilariously funny conversations and behavior hint at mysterious forces and surface realism and coexists with expressionistic, metaphorically pungent drama.

Albee has long recognized Beckett as the literary father of his often enigmatic and dark plays and has been quoted as declaring "We're all Beckett's children." Four years ago, New Yorkers had a chance to experience another Beckett/Albee partnership (Beckett-Albee review) . Unlike the Zoo Story/Krapp's Last Tape coupling, the now well-established Albee's part of the evening, Counting the Ways, was more or less a postscript and tribute to Beckett —an unusually playful piece to top off three much denser Beckett monologues.

Homelife is quite another story. It's is not just another short play to team up with The Zoo Story, but an integral part of what is now a full-fledged two-act play. As a program note by Albee explains this belated transformation of one-act into two-act play: "It nagged me just a bit that it {The Zoo Story} seemed to be not quite a two-character play—Jerry being so much longer a role— but more a one-and-a-half-character one." When he finally decided to do something about adding a first act that would flesh out Peter and make for "a better balance" the result was Homelife.

While I can't imagine Beckett ever attempting either a prequel or coda for Estragon and Vladimir, Albee's addition works quite well —.and mind you, Homelife should viewed as an addition and not a revision since, despite the title change to Peter and Jerry and a reference to novelist Stephen King, The Zoo Story has not been rewritten.

The added first act is more like the above mentioned Counting the Ways. Its amusing dialogue has Albee borrowing from one his favorite replies to queries as to what one of his plays is about ("about 2 hours") by having Peter answer Ann's what's it about query regarding the "boring but important" textbook his firm is publishing with "about 700 pages." Naturally, Albee being Albee, the Cowardesque marital conversation turns darker and thus serves as a parallel for the Peter and Jerry encounter that follows. Those parallels are a bit too symmetrical and at times threaten to rob the second act of its abstract, Beckettian power. Fortunately, the cast is so terrific, that this threat is never realized so that Homelife is at once engaging and disturbing, and The Zoo Story is as dark and menacing as ever.

On re-reading The Zoo Story both before seeing it at Williamstown and, now at Second Stage, it also once more makes a case for an Albee's essay ("Why Read Plays?" in Zoetrope') in which he urged readers to experience a play as literature as well as performance, The Zoo Story, with or without a prequel, does indeed read extremely well and vividly evokes appearance and body language. To prove my point, herewith the opening dialogue:
JERRY: I've been to the zoo. [PETER doesn't notice.] I said, I've been to the zoo. MISTER, I'VE BEEN TO THE ZOO!
PETER: Hm? . . . What? . . . I'm sorry, were you talking to me?
JERRY: I went to the zoo, and then I walked until I came here. Have I been walking north?
PETER: [puzzled] North? Why. . . I . . . I think so. Let me see.
JERRY: [pointing past the audience] Is that Fifth avenue?
PETER: Why ya; yes, it is.
JERRY: And what is that cross street there; that one, to the right?
PETER: That? Oh, that's Seventy-fourth Street.
JERRY: And the zoo is around Sixty-fifth Street; so, I've been walking north.
PETER: [anxious to get back to his reading] Yes; it would seem so.
JERRY: Good old north.
PETER: [lightly, by reflex] Ha, ha.
JERRY: [after a slight pause] But not due north.
PETER: I. . . well, no, not due north; but, we ... call it north. It's northerly.
JERRY: [watches as PETER, anxious to dismiss him, prepares his pipe] Well, boy you're not going to get lung cancer, are you?
PETER: [looks up, a little annoyed, then smiles] No, sir. Not from this.
JERRY: No, sir. What you'll probably get is cancer of the mouth, and then you'll have to wear one of those things Freud wore after they took one whole side of his jaw away, What do they call those things ?
PETER: [uncomfortable] A prosthesis?
JERRY: The very thing! A prosthesis. You're an educated man, aren't you ? Are you a doctor ?
PETER: Oh, no; no. I read about it somewhere: Time magazine, I think. [He turns to his book.]
JERRY: Well, Time magazine isn't for blockheads.
PETER: No, I suppose not.