THEATER REVIEW : The New ‘Zoo’ : Rendition of Albee’s earliest play features actors who speak and sign throughout.

Edward Albee’s earliest play, “The Zoo Story,” which dramatizes the perils of communication and isolation, has been reanimated in an exciting experiment in innovative staging at the new Artists Workout Studio.

The two-character one-act, in which a nerdy publishing executive’s encounter on a park bench with a shiftless wanderer propels a life-altering confrontation, features hearing actors who speak and sign simultaneously throughout the production.

The show opened late last month and has been drawing such ample houses, divided between hearing and hearing-impaired patrons, that the run has been extended through the end of May.

Aside from a mesmerizing, first-rate revival in conventional and traditional terms, the added element of the actors (Michael Bonnabel and Conrad Dunn) voicing and signing at the same time makes the production special, if not, indeed, groundbreaking.

Other companies have staged plays in sign language, but they are either accompanied, for the benefit of the hearing, by live actors off stage reading aloud from the script or by recorded dialogue heard through earphones.

In the case of “Zoo Story,” two exceptional actors and director Jodi Binstock (a New York University film school grad making her Los Angeles theatrical debut) have managed to turn the signing experience into an unexpected embellishment for the hearing.

For someone who does not read sign language (such as this reviewer), the signing, rather than confusing events and filling the air with visual distraction, enhances the mounting tension between the characters. From the beginning, the signing appears to the hearing audience members as coming from two guys who happen to gesture with a lot of volatile body language.

Not to be overlooked in this biting revival of the 1960 off-Broadway hit, which launched Albee’s career and influenced other American playwrights of the early ‘60s, is the announcement last week that Albee had won the Pulitzer Prize (his third) for the current New York production of “Three Tall Women” (a theatrical coming to terms with his strained feelings for his mother).

But Albee’s strongest work was done in the 1960s, and “Zoo Story” is characteristic of his pungent language and dark, edgy view of human nature. Much in the manner of “Dutchman,” LeRoi Jones’ (now Amiri Baraka) bitter subway drama from the same period, “The Zoo Story” is notable for its economy of character and its jolting, bloody resolution.

It’s to the immense credit of actors Dunn and Bonnabel that although many theatergoers may be familiar with the outcome, the ending still arrives with shocking impact in director Binstock’s expertly crafted fade-to-black ending (she also designed the autumnal lighting scheme).

Albee’s crackling dialogue always seems to be looking for a fight. In the very first line of the play, and materializing from nowhere in leafy Central Park (set design by Darrell Martin), Dunn’s street bum intrudes on the privacy of Bonnabel’s meek businessman, who is reading a book.

The shabbily dressed homeless man says, “I’ve been to the zoo.”

The man with the book doesn’t answer.

“I said I’ve been to the zoo. MISTER, I’VE BEEN TO THE ZOO!”

“What?” responds the passive man with the book. “I’m sorry, were you talking to me?” That’s his first mistake. The ensuing riff of innuendoes and wary intonations are delightfully off-putting, thanks to the skill of the players and the discipline of a company that looks as if it’s going places.

WHERE AND WHEN

* What: “The Zoo Story.”

* Location: Actors Workout Studio, 4735 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood.

* Hours: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Ends May 29.

* Price: $10.

* Call: (818) 506-3903. TDD reservations for hearing-impaired audience members, call (310) 868-7168.