You might recognize the title of The Animal Kingdom from the 1930s Philip Barry comedy of manners about a man trying to justify his love for both his wife and his mistress. Well, forget it. That is emphatically not The Animal Kingdom which restlessly inhabits the Connelly Theater these days.

This new Animal Kingdom—by British TV writer Ruby Thomas, imported to these shores by producer-director Jack Serio—has a man, Tim (played by David Cromer), who resolved that quaint wife/mistress quandary years ago. He married the mistress and started a new family, only to dragged back into therapy sessions with the family he left behind: his logorrheic wife Rita (Tasha Lawrence), his ignored daughter Sofia (Lily McInerny), and his anguished son Sam (Uly Schlesinger), fresh from a suicide attempt that brought on this forced “reunion.” A zoology major in college, Sam sees the women in his home as bonobos and his emotionally pent-up dad as a hippopotamus with a submerged, slow-beating heart—thus, evidently, an animal kingdom.

“Sam understands the animal world,” Cromer tells Observer, “but can’t manage the human world.”

There is much to unpack here, and it’s handled with remarkable compassion and patience by a soft-spoken psychotherapist, Daniel (Calvin Leon Smith), who does all he can in six sessions.

Like Austin Pendleton and Joe Mantello, Cromer is a hyperactive hyphenate—a theatrical professional who wears two interchangeable hats: one for acting, and one for directing.

“I like it very much,” he says. “I’ve a........

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