When strangers have a go at each others’ throats

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Scenes from The Zoo Story—Abhijit Mukherjee

When two strangers meet and connect through a conversation, then chances are that either they start liking each other or they don’t have any vibe at all. If they gel well, then their growing fondness might give way to a lifelong friendship or else, they just move on with their lives.

But rarely would they bother to get on each other’s nerves with a ravenous rancour and bitterness, unless one of them provokes the other to lunge to that level. The case of Peter and Jerry is quite similar to that second possibility.
A person’s peaceful privacy is a precious possession. But if another guy wants to intrude that space unjustifiably, then all hell breaks loose. Initially, the assailant appears innocuous in his intentions. But gradually, he exposes his hidden demons, shovels out his bestial bowels and fetid rawness to pounce upon his reticently placid prey.
Deftly staging this Peter-Jerry story at the Lincoln Room of Kolkata’s American Centre, the reputed English theatre-troupe Theatrecian offers a painstaking tribute to the eminent American playwright Edward Albee, who had originally woven the script of The Zoo Story back in the 50s. Penned in the year 1958, the play’s context still seems very much relevant in contemporary times as its subject blatantly rings true with any society where isolation, class distinction, economic disparity and hurdles in communication exist.
Formerly called Peter and Jerry, The Zoo Story is a one-act play, exploring the themes of isolation, loneliness, miscommunication, social disagreement and dehumanisation in the commercial world.
Cast as the rebel Jerry, talented young actor Deborshi Barat is quite a revelation in this layered masterpiece of Albee. With a good voice, a clear diction, a striking attitude and the right kind of body language, the actor could fit the bill to the tee. He takes his superlative histrionics to a crescendo when the creature inside him tears out of his humane skin. The rabid crudity, the pent-up angst and the simmering anger in his flesh and blood come to the fore to take the world by a violent storm. A perfect foil on the other hand is Tathagata Chowdhury’s Peter. A man of few words, Peter is shown to be cocooned inside a shell of his own, slightly detached from the depravity and grisly realities of life.
But with Jerry’s nudge and instigation, he slowly collapses into a jittery neurotic person who is on the verge of murdering his tormentor at the minutest plea. Scurrying around like an edgy maniac, Peter helplessly calls out to the police with the loudest shriek under the roof only to find himself at the receiving end of Jerry’s persuasive decoy. Like a fidgety mouse in a tricky trap, Peter falls victim to his killer instinct, surreptitiously aroused by Jerry and winds up the uncalled-for interaction by stabbing Jerry on the bench in a park.
Despite with an hour-long duration, the play can become a cloying strain on the nerves at moments with only one character speaking at length, while the other listening in a silent submission. Simultaneously, the audience is all ears too. Though all the expressions are directed at Peter, yet the message and the underlying sub-text are meant for the captive viewers to grasp and understand.
Dwelling on an opposite pole, Jerry however seems visibly tormented and traumatised with a society which is so brutally fragmented and divisively categorised as “upper class, middle class and lower class” strata, as he urges the docile Peter to fight for his manhood and realise that there are other more valuable things than the mere “cosy, secluded park-bench in one corner of a grassy plot” on which he is comfortably perched every Sunday afternoon in “good weather”.
Helmed by Tanusree Das, the play could noticeably strike a chord with the discerning gathering, which responded with a standing ovation after it culminated on a tragic note with the death of a bruised, blooded Jerry, slouched upon the bench. The art-direction is absolutely minimalistic as the performance-area is only propped up with a single shaky wooden bench, placed right at its centre. The sole object comes as a matching precision to the solitary figure of Peter engrossly reading a book in the quietude of nature. This calm atmosphere is disrupted by a thoroughly distraught man, suffering from pangs of obscure alienation.
Traces of ironic humour and an unrelenting vein of dramatic suspense prevail in the climax when Jerry drags down his casualty to a level of wild, ferocity.
A shocking ending befalls soon after Peter decides to leave and go home as it really gets late.
At the same time Jerry prevents him and begins to push him off the bench but Peter decides to combat for his territory on the bench and resists to move away. He sticks to his guns and slowly turns irate with Jerry’s misdemeanour. Unexpectedly, Jerry pulls out a knife on Peter, and then drops it only to stimulate Peter to grab. And when Peter holds the knife defensively like a shield as predicted by Jerry, the latter at once darts at him and pierces himself on the knife.
Punctured and lying in a pool of blood clutching onto his deep gory wound, on the park-bench, Jerry finishes his zoo story by bringing it into the immediate present.
Thereupon, he pops up a vital query: “Could I have planned all this. No...no, I couldn’t have. But I think I did.” Stunned and terrified, Peter escapes the ghastly site and exits the stage.