Review of a play
The Goat-or Who is Sylvia by Edward Albee, performed at Carpenter Square Theater on Sunday September 23, 2007.
The play lasts about 115 minutes. It started at 2:15 and we were out by 5 anyway and had a 15 minute intermission between the final acts. The plot is focused on Stevie, Billy, and Martin, a ‘typical’ family. Martin is an uber-successful architect who has recently been awarded several major projects and a national award in architecture. However, he has a not-so-secret secret. Like a Greek tragedy, the secret is out early and in force- Martin is having an affair. With a goat. Named Sylvia. Seriously, Martin tells us this in the first scene- less than ten minutes in the play, during some playfully overdramatic banter with his wife, Stevie, he tells her that he’s fucking a goat. She laughs and leaves, allowing the duplicitous best friend to enter and learn the secret for real. The end of the first traditional scene, or perhaps the first act itself, is simply the best friend Ross saying that either Martin has to tell the family, or he will. The next scene/act, and also the next day, Stevie has a letter from Ross ‘spilling the beans,’ which she reads aloud three times completely and once in part in the following scene. In the following action, Stevie and Martin attempt to ‘hash it out,’ Martin telling of his first meeting with Sylvia, his trip to a support group, his feelings of isolation and ‘otherness,’ because even though he loves the goat, he still loves Stevie. And Stevie breaks things. Lots and lots of things. And yells. Billy, the supposedly 17 year old son, who acts more like 12 or 14, has a few weak appearances here, mostly to show how much of a Mama’s boy he is, and to illustrate the separation of Martin. At the end, Stevie leaves, promising Martin that she will ‘bring him down.’ And then there’s a fifteen minute break. The final act is Billy and Martin cleaning the living room, apparently the next morning. Here we can see some parallels between the gay son and the ‘perverted’ father. Eventually Ross shows up, concerned, but not so concerned or sad that he didn’t keep his trap shut and let Martin tell his family in a more appropriate way or time. Two minutes later, Stevie arrives with Sylvia. The play ends with Martin being ‘down’ about what Stevie has done to Sylvia, and Billy saying, “Mom? Dad?”
All in all, while the premise, a play that deals with bestiality and its affects on the American Family, is interesting, I don’t think that Albee or this play anyway was ready to face the question head on, which is what it attempts to do. Sympathy rests fully with Martin, since Stevie is portrayed as such a controlling bitch and Ross is only interested in saving Martin’s public image. Martin didn’t have a real conflict or resolution- He was okay with his love of Sylvia and his love of Stevie; he’s even okay with his son’s love of other men. At no point in the play does he have the epiphany which allows him to understand why bestiality is ‘wrong,’ or at least considered by our society and his family as perverted. If he had the reverse epiphany, which he hints at several times, he never really leads us the audience down that road. The closest he ever comes is “I thought I was a goat too” when trying to explain his love to Stevie. And Stevie’s questions, “How can you love me in the same way as you love this animal?” isn’t really answered anyway, even with the, correct, answer of “We’re animals too.” Billy doesn’t even get to attempt to understand his father’s perversion during their moments in the last act, instead talking about how he’s going to do his family biography in school now that his dad’s a ‘goat fucker.’
The last act didn’t seem long enough to merit a full intermission; perhaps this was done by the director so the audience could have some discussion time, which the house manager encouraged in her welcoming speech.
The way the play is resolved- the death of Sylvia and the broken-hearted wails of Martin- imply that the real theme of the play isn’t really bestiality. I considered polygamy or polyandry as an alternative; but in many ways it doesn’t fit. Or my own reactions to the poly life style are hindering my ‘modern American’ reaction. Truly, my own reaction to the bestiality isn’t all so grandiose as even Billy’s. I checked the review in The New York Times for The Goat and that critic agrees (and also states that his version was 100 minutes without an intermission)- the play just doesn’t feel like Albee’s really behind the pen. He may have written it, but it’s not the same hard hitting stuff. The ending is too sudden, and leaves a feeling of incompleteness. The questions about lust and human arousal aren’t answered, even approached in a comprehensive way.
And perhaps that’s what Albee wants-who but an animal can love completely without reason and without question?
(yeah. That's crap.)