Aug. 2025

Aug 1

Someone told me
It’s all happening at the zoo.
I do believe it.
I do believe it’s true.

Alert readers (ARs) who were alive and alert in the 1960s — not everyone was both all the time — will recall this opening stanza of “At the Zoo”, which Simon & Garfunkel wrote for the soundtrack of The Graduate. The song, which was not used in the film, recounts a visit to The Central Park Zoo, not far from where Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel grew up in Queens.

If Paul and Art had grown up in St. Louis six decades later they might have been inspired to write about something happening right now at the Saint Louis Zoo that’s much more amazing than anything they ever would have encountered at the Central Park Zoo. I’m referring to Romeo & Zooliet.

The only zoo where anything this amazing has ever happened before is The Stratford Zoo, a fictional zoo imagined by Ian Lendler in his series of graphic novels about zoo animals who come out of their cages at night to perform plays by William Shakespeare.

One such work, The Stratford Zoo Midnight Revue Presents Romeo and Juliet, inspired St. Louis playwright Jennifer Joan Thompson to write Romeo & Zooliet about animals inside the Saint Louis Zoo who stage their own production of Romeo and Juliet. In Thompson’s play the Montagues are herbivores and the Capulets are carnivores. Romeo the Montague is a prairie dog. Juliet the Capulet is a grizzly bear.

The production features puppetry by Michael Curry Design, whose work has been seen on Broadway in The Lion King and Frozen; and in Olympic and Super Bowl ceremonies. Romeo & Zooliet is a collaboration between the world famous Saint Louis Zoo and The St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, of which Schlafly is a proud sponsor and on whose board I’m honored to serve. Performances run through August 17th at Historic Hill in The Zoo.

The Saint Louis Zoo isn’t the only atypical venue in which a Shakespeare play has been staged in St. Louis. Two hundred and seven years ago, on July 25, 1818, John H. Vos hosted a production of King Henry IV, which was the first Shakespeare play ever staged here. The historical record is unclear as to where exactly the play was performed, with some scholars saying it was in a blacksmith shop and others saying it was at the Green Tree Tavern.

Without having studied the record carefully (i.e. not at all) I’m convinced the play must have been performed at the Green Tree Tavern. As ARs who are familiar with the play will recall, the most memorable scenes occur in a tavern, namely the Boar’s Head Inn in Eastcheap. Where better to perform a play about a tavern than in a tavern? ARs will also recall that one of most memorable characters was Sir John Falstaff, for whom one of the most popular beers in St. Louis was later named.

One hundred and eighty-three years later, in 2001, the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival began putting on plays in Shakespeare Glen in Forest Park with no admission charge. The most recent of these productions was Hamlet, which ran from May 28 to June 22. A little over two weeks later Romeo & Zooliet opened next door at the Zoo.

Two days after that closes, on August 19th, the Tourco production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream will begin a series of performances in multiple locations around the region, including: The Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Peters, Washington University, Edwardsville, Hermann, East St. Louis, O’Fallon, MO, Kiener Plaza, Belleville, Carondelet Park, Ferguson, Clayton, Columbia, IL, Normandy, Truman State University, Fairgrounds Park, The Saint Louis Art Museum, and Grand Center.

To paraphrase Simon & Garfunkel, it’s all not just happening at the zoo, but all over The Lou and beyond as well.

Tom Schlafly
Chairman
Schlafly | The Saint Louis Brewery