[ssba]
The Goat or, Who is Sylvia
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
LGBT’s Davidson/Valentini Theatre
Through Nov. 23
Edward Albee meant it literally when he subtitled The Goat or, Who is Sylvia as “notes towards a definition of tragedy.”
Tragedy, in Greek, means goat story. Scholars aren’t sure how the word and the animal came to be linked: whether goats were the prize given at the annual playwriting contest held in ancient Athens, or whether the creature was part of an attendant sacrificial ceremony for Dionysus. Or something else.
Whatever the reason, you don’t have to dig deep to divine parallels between Albee’s story about the disintegration of a modern family and Sophoclean tragedy.
Like the Greek heroes of old, Albee’s main character Martin (Paul Witten) at first seems to have it all. Just turning 50, he’s an architect at the top of his game. Besides winning a Pritzker – the equivalent of a Pulitzer for architects – he’s been honored with a prestigious assignment designing the World City, a multi-billion dollar urban utopia of the future.
Martin is happily married to Stevie (Ann Noble), an elegant beauty to whom (up until now) he’s remained faithful. They share their oh-so-tasteful highbrow apartment (spot-on set design by Robert Selander) with their son Billy (Spencer Morrissey). He’s a gay youngster whose sexual preference, in this liberal household, has been pretty much accepted without too much fuss or bother.
But of late, Martin has been preoccupied, and when the play begins there’s some joking repartee between him and Stevie about whether he’s developing Alzheimer’s.
He isn’t. Instead, Martin has retreated to the caverns of his inner self to ruminate on an unspeakable secret: his love, and erotic obsession for, a goat named Sylvia.
His secret comes out during a conversation with an old and close friend Ross (Matt Kirkwood), a veteran confidante who pries the information from him, then betrays his trust by revealing it to Stevie.
All hell breaks loose as the incredulous Stevie, overwhelmed with rage and disgust (she’s in sexual competition with a goat?!), interrogates her husband. For his part Martin knows he’s crossed into taboo territory, but he’s unable and/or unwilling to deny his feelings for Sylvia. The situation deteriorates further when a freaked out Billy also confronts his dad.
The entire scene – one in which an almost unimaginably grotesque circumstance is made plausible – really makes for remarkable drama. In that regard It reminded me of another play mounted earlier this year, Taste, which dealt with cannibalism.
Like Taste, The Goat isn’t so much concerned with exploiting the shock element of deviant behavior as with the tremulous human emotion – the before and after – that surrounds and envelops its captive participants.
The production’s most striking moments belong to Noble. As the wronged spouse, she rises magnificently to the occasion, displaying cold wrath and cunning wit in epic proportion.
The rest of the playacting, though adept, is of lesser substance. Witten has a handle on Martin’s confusion and haplessness and relays it well. What’s never glimpsed, under Ken Sawyer’s direction, is a complete portrait of the man. Noble is also rather prim and stagily stiff when we first meet her; perhaps to set up a contrast with the incendiary crater of fury she evolves into. But all that mannered posing really does undercut the story; it lower the stakes by making their marriage seem hollow from the start.
There’s not enough shading to Kirkwood’s Ross – a typically crass kind of guy who serves as foil for the sensitive Martin and the ironic mouthpiece for society’s judgment. And Morrissey likewise relies too heavily on the material, instead of taking his own personal plunge into chaos and delivering up the results.
Davidson/Valentini Theatre, 1125 N. Mccadden Place, Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through Nov. 23. (323) 860-7300, www.lalgbtcenter.org/theatre
