Word: dreaming
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...American Dream and The Zoo Story...
BEFORE Edward Albee wrote that famous sexual shouting match, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, before he was too old to be an Angry Young Play-wright, he wrote two one-act attacks on convention, complacency and middle-class values. Thirty years later, The American Dream and The Zoo Story have lost some of their relevance--and thus some of their power to disturb the complacent viewer. But Albee's disarming absurdity and brutal frankness remain, and thanks to a talented Harvard/Radcliffe Summer Theater company, those qualities can still make audiences squirm in their seats...
...American Dream seems especially dated. It's the story of what is supposed to be a parody of an ideal American couple, circa 1960. Mommy (Holly Cate) spends her days shopping or meeting with her women's auxilliary club, while Daddy (Donal Logue) spends his reading the paper in his easy chair. Mommy wears a bright pink party dress, the kind that domestic ex-prom queens like June Cleaver and Donna Reed wore on TV sitcoms in the 1950s and early 1960s. In fact, TV-sitcom theme songs play in the background to drive home the point of Mommy...
Because of the anachronisms, Dream's satire hasn't aged well. Mommy and her women's club friend, Mrs. Barker (Caroline Bicks) bear little resemblance to career-minded 1980s women. It's also hard to laugh at a feeble man who calls his dominating wife "Mommy," since President Reagan is still in office...
...games with language are his strength, not only because they provide the most laughs, but also because they make a point of the inability of isolated, urban man to touch or communicate with another human being. This point is still relevant, and it is the reason that The American Dream and The Zoo Story are still chilling--and still worth seeing...