(Above, left to right: Dan Pegoda, Kelly Oristano, and Kari Welch are the characters in Oregon Contemporary Theatre’s production of Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo.)

By Randi Bjornstad

Edward Albee wrote two plays about zoos — 50 years apart — and the second one, At Home at the Zoo, onstage through Nov. 11 at the Oregon Contemporary Theatre, is the second one.

Oddly enough, however, it amounts to a prequel to the first one, The Zoo Story, that he wrote 60 years ago and which propelled him to stardom in the playwriting world.

What that means is that the first act, called Homelife, serves as Act One, with The Zoo Story making up Act Two. Once he had the two-act version, Albee decreed that The Zoo Story no longer could be produced by professional theater companies but only as part of At Home at the Zoo.

Craig Willis, OCT’s artistic director, who directs this two-act version, which he describes as “bitingly funny word-play (that) is the hallmark of Albee’s characters.”

Like other Albee works, the play also dissects human relationships with an overlay of the darkness and cruelty that too often can characterize them.

The Zoo Story told the tale of Peter and Jerry — played here by Dan Pegoda and Kelly Oristano — who improbably meet and converse on a New York City park bench. Peter is a wealthy executive with a wife, children, pets, and a comfortable life. Jerry is a loner who accosts Peter with disturbing and unhappy stories about his own life and then suddenly pulls out a knife, challenges Peter to attack him, and in an ensuing scuffle ends up himself accidentally stabbed and dying.

Heavy stuff.

Then comes the prequel, Homelife, that reportedly grew out of Albee’s half-century of thinking that The Zoo Story hadn’t been quite enough, mostly because the character of Peter was mostly a shadow of a person while the character of Jerry was complete.

So he added a character in the person of Peter’s wife, Ann, using that relationship to round out what happened later, and the completed version had its world premiere in Hartford, Conn., in 2004.

In the OCT production of At Home at the Zoo, Kari Welch performs the role of Ann.

Willis compares the relationships in this play with that of George and Martha, the characters in another  of Albee’s masterpieces, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”.

The technical team for At Home at the Zoo  includes sound designer Gabe Carlin, fight choreographer William Hulings, costume designer Heather Kidd, lighting designer Kat Matthews, and scenic designer Craig Willis, with Rebecca Blanchard as production stage manager.

At Home at the Zoo

When: 7:3o p.m. on Oct. 26-27, Nov. 1-3 and 8-10; matinees at 2 p.m. on Nov. 4 and 11; pay-what-you-can previews are at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 24-f25

Where: Oregon Contemporary Theatre, 194 W. Broadway, Eugene

Tickets: $20 to $40 ($15 for students with valid ID except for opening night on Oct. 26), available at the box office, 541-465-1506, or online at octheatre.org