Augesen, Felciano and Fusco Are Albee's Zoo People in San Francisco

By Kenneth Jones
10 Jun 2009

At Home at the Zoo's René Augesen and Anthony Fusco
At Home at the Zoo's René Augesen and Anthony Fusco
Photo by Kevin Berne

Tony Award nominee Manoel Felciano, who played Toby in Broadway's recent Sweeney Todd, is the volatile outcast Jerry in American Conservatory Theater's production of Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo, opening June 10 after previews from June 5 in San Francisco.

The work is a pairing of Albee's early-career play, The Zoo Story, in which Peter and Jerry meet on a park bench, and a recent Albee "prequel" play that tells about Peter's day with his wife prior to the encounter. (The double-bill was first called Peter and Jerry, but Albee now prefers At Home at the Zoo.)

A.C.T. acting company members Anthony Fusco and René Augesen are Peter and his wife, Ann, respectively.

Staged by acclaimed director Rebecca Bayla Taichman (world premieres of Theresa Rebeck's The Scene and Mauritius and Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone), the production will play A.C.T.'s Geary Theatre in San Francisco through July 5.

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A.C.T. bills the work by Pulitzer Prize winner Albee (Seascape, A Delicate Balance, Three Tall Women, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?) as "a meticulously calibrated and dangerously brutal look at relationships intimate and unexpected. The story opens with Peter, a tweedy book editor, and his wife, Ann, whose everyday conversation takes an unexpected turn into dangerously personal territory. It's the kind of conversation that can drive a husband out for a walk — to Central Park, where Jerry, a desperate outcast, awaits. …At Home at the Zoo bares its teeth to threaten the delicately balanced world its characters inhabit."

San Francisco native Felciano's credits include Ragtime at The Kennedy Center, A.C.T.'s Rock 'n' Roll and Sweeney Todd on Broadway, where he was nominated as Best Featured Actor in a Musical.

Felciano recently shared the A.C.T. stage with Fusco and Augesen in Rock 'n' Roll.

The creative team for the show includes lighting designer Stephen Strawbridge and costume designer David F. Draper. Scenic designer Robert Brill received a Tony Award nomination May 5 for his work on Guys and Dolls on Broadway.

Tickets — starting at $14 — are available by calling A.C.T. Ticket Services at (415) 749-2228, or at www.act-sf.org.