George Flint, founder of Renaissance Theatre Company which has opened to such high acclaim over the past three years, has been producing and directing shows celebrating some of the most influential playwrights of our time. He now brings to the intimate 6^th @ Penn stage two one-acts by Edward Albee whose plays, inspired by playwrights such as Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, have won much praise including three Pulitzers and a Tony.

The first one-act, The American Dream, is an absurdist satire on family values. We find ourselves looking into the loudly decorated, red-white-and-blue living room of an old married couple which is dominated by a middle-aged Mommy (Sandra Ellis-Troy) who is interested in kicking Grandma (Pat DiMeo) out of the house even while she occasionally pays lip service to wanting her to stay, and who talks a lot to Daddy (Jack Banning) while he smiles and nods and feigns interest in her blaring and annoying conversation. When a visitor by the name of Mrs. Barker (Dagmar Krause Fields) drops by, and nobody can quite remember why she had an appointment with them (including Mrs. Barker), it becomes ever clearer that there is something disturbingly dysfunctional about these people. And that’s before you find out why Daddy and Mommy no longer have Baby!

The cast is superb, fully drawing us into this strange, new reality of tenuous sanity. Sandra Ellis-Troy is perfectly obnoxious and short-tempered as Mommy. Jack Banning’s facial expressions as the happily content Daddy are an absolute riot, including when he finds himself the target of Mrs. Barker’s flirtatious attentions. And Pat DiMeo’s bright, lively eyes and charisma give great life and spirit to the scheming Grandma, especially when she runs into "The American Dream" – a strong, if not terribly bright, Young Man (Landon Vaughn) who may hold the key to everyone’s happiness.

This odd comedy is followed by an intense and disturbing drama – The Zoo Story. Peter (Marcus Overton), an upper-middle class man trying get in some quiet reading on a bench in Central Park, finds himself drawn into a conversation with a shady-looking character named Jerry (Jeffrey Jones). Jerry’s wild eyes and strange manner suggest right away that there is something wrong with him. But to be polite, Peter listens to his story, a story that begins with Jerry asking Peter if he had been to the zoo lately, and a story that promises to explain what Jerry did at the zoo that day. And why he would be in the news later that night.