The Lyric Stage Company Gets Albee's 'Goat'

"The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?"  By Edward Albee                                                                                                

"Notes Toward a Definition of Tragedy"

Director,  Spiro Veloudos      Scenic Design,  Brynna C. Bloomfield  

Costume Design,  Shanna Parks     Lighting Design,  Robert Cordella

CAST      

Paula Plum as Stevie, Stephen Schnetzer as Martin

Richard Snee as Ross, Tasso Feldman as Billy

Performances through March 19 Box Office 617-585-5678    www.lyricstage.com

In reading the plot summary of "The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?" one barely scratches the surface of what Edward Albee puts forth in this 2002 Tony Award winning play.  It is deep, intense, and rife with metaphor, as well as loaded with laughs as presented by Spiro Veloudos and the Lyric Stage Company of Boston.

Martin is a just-turned fifty-year-old architect who has won the Pritzker Prize and been selected to design "the billion dollar dream city of the future," all in the same week. When we meet him, he seems rather dazed and confused as he bemoans the state of his memory to his wife Stevie. While she obviously adores him, that doesn't stop her from good-naturedly ribbing him about this sign of advancing age. Their ease with each other in their comfortable living room, decorated with numerous objets d'art, illustrates the nature of their relationship. Here are a husband and wife who, 22 years into their marriage, still love each other and their 17-year old gay son Billy.

Enter Martin's best friend Ross to conduct a publicity interview. They've known each other for forty years, so Ross senses something in Martin's distraction and draws him out to talk about it. Although the audience knows what's coming, Ross is not at all prepared to learn that Martin is having an affair with a goat! Martin tries, but fails, to make him understand and appreciate what Sylvia means to him by describing their first encounter dreamily…"those eyes…she was looking at me."

This is a one hour and forty minute one-act play with no scene changes, only fade to black to indicate the passage of time. When the lights come up next, all three members of the family are in the living room with a distinct feeling of tension in the air. Ross has betrayed Martin's trust and sent a tell-all letter to Stevie who confronts her husband with the missive in hand. Paula Plum beautifully transforms from the enamored to the enraged, passing through stages of bewilderment, disbelief, and simple anger in a gradual build-up of emotion. Her jaw drops, her voice quivers, and her arms flail, until she finally gets to release by smashing plates and overturning furniture. Stevie wants Martin to tell her the whole story, but can't stand (or sit) to hear it without venting her rage. As he relates the tale that dismantles and destroys their family life, she does the same to the once comfortable living room.

Albee creates a kind of claustrophobic atmosphere by keeping all of the action in the living room as he did in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" while other things do happen offstage. We feel the imprisonment of Martin, Stevie, and even Billy, although he is told by his parents to leave the room for a time. Stephen Schnetzer is called upon to portray a range of emotions in this situation. While he is not contrite because he doesn't truly feel that he's done anything wrong, Martin at least has the good sense to sit quietly and look culpable while Stevie rants. However, as the scene plays out, his temperature rises as well. He lashes out at Billy when the boy takes him to task for his outrageous admission and they both resort to nasty name-calling. His frustration gets the better of him when he fails to make his wife understand the purity and innocence of his love for Sylvia and that it does not diminish his love for her. He tells her, "I love you and I love her and there it is."

That's a toughie. Anyone who has been betrayed in a relationship would question that, especially in the context of trying to fathom that the paramour is not just another woman, but a goat. It raises the question of whether or not it is possible to know the person you love and advances the play's theme of love and tolerance. Is bestiality not okay by definition, or only if you get found out? Albee said that "Goat" had been written to "test a few boundaries" and there were moments during this performance when the audience reacted as if it were pushed to the edge, when laughs sounded more like groans, or when lines or actions elicited a sucking in of air in unison. However, it is these moments that stay with us and cause us to really think about what is happening on the stage. Albee wants us to examine the limits of our tolerance and society's boundaries in the 21^st century where it seems anything goes. In an MTV world, is anything taboo? Well, yes, apparently.

Stevie responds with words and actions. She delivers a searing speech to Martin about the idyllic life they had been blessed with and that they only needed to not screw it up, but he had screwed it up. She tells him that he brought her down and she is going to bring him down with her, then storms out of the house. The obvious option available to her is to make his unthinkable act public, all the more devastating in light of his recent acclaim. However, as Martin's indiscretion is out of the realm of possibility to Stevie, so is her act of revenge and retaliation. The playwright shocks us along with the other characters, but explains it all as an act of love, brutal and primitive.

The dynamic between father and son is well played by Schnetzer and Tasso Feldman, but I would have liked further exploration and exposition of their relationship. It seems to be Albee's style to leave many unanswered questions at the conclusion of his plays. The larger questions posed by "Goat" must be ruminated on by the playgoer, perhaps while walking down a country road, chewing on a piece of grass.

 

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