Theatre Review:
The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?
Directed by: René D. Copeland • Written by: Edward Albee
In a nutshell: Wickedly funny and definitely disturbing (but in the best possible way!) Four and a half out of five stars.
I’ll be upfront about the Tennessee Rep’s latest production: It’s a humdinger. Filled with brutal emotional upheavals, literary in-jokes, rapid-fire obscenity-laden dialogue, and some pretty damn intense scenes, Albee’s The Goat is a challenging piece of theatre, and the Rep carries it out to great effect. If you’re uncomfortable sliding down the ideological slippery slopes of incest, homosexuality, adultery, and—of course—bestiality, you’d better stay at home and watch American Idol. Seriously. Albee probably wouldn’t want your conventional, boring ass there anyway. If, however, you’re up for something different, and willing to have a laugh at the impressive array of goat-buggering jokes, you’re in for a real theatre treat.
It begins, you see, with Martin—a well-respected and eminently respectable architect. He’s been happily married for 20+ years to Stevie, the mother of his teenage son; and his best friend Ross is interviewing him for a television show. It’s been a landmark year for Martin: he just turned 50; has been honored with the Pritzker Architecture Prize; and was recently selected to design the World City, a corporate-sponsored community being built in the middle of a cornfield. Despite the minor indignities of middle age, Martin is at the top of the world. And, incidentally, he’s having a love affair with Sylvia, who turns out to be a goat.
The subsequent action in the play—how he confesses his attachment to Ross who, in turn, tells Stevie; and how his son and wife confront this mind-blowing announcement—plays out with great emotional realism and sometimes sickening honesty, despite the absurd premise, in large part because of the likable helplessness of Martin himself. This is a character largely free from malice; he seems just as nonplussed by the goatish nature of his lover as anyone, but is sincere in his affection. But while the audience can afford to extend its sympathy to Martin, the other characters in the play—bound to him by ties of blood, marriage, and friendship—are not so generous. And the resulting fireworks, and the shocking ending, are well worth watching.
Actor Matthew Carlton deserves a goat-load of credit for his portrayal of Martin, who is the heart of the play. It is a hell of a task to make a character who gets emotional with livestock, betrays his wife, and calls his teenage son a “faggot” relatable, but that is precisely what Mr. Carlton achieves. Martin is flawed, but Martin is also suffering and it hurts to watch his reaction as his comfortable life unravels. Ruth Cordell’s Stevie is, as she should be, Martin’s perfect foil. While he is careless and forgetful, she is well-polished and deliberately-spoken. She is—to use an entirely outdated term—a classy broad; sophisticated, intelligent, and straight-up MILF material to boot. She can even make a word like “hooters” sound proper when she speaks, which is why it is so delightful to watch her politeness slowly disintegrate as her fury at Martin increases. When the explosion finally comes, it is breathtaking.
Mr. Carlton and Ms. Cordell have excellent chemistry and are a pleasure to watch in their scenes together. They are entirely believable as a committed, long-term couple: even in the midst of the upheaval Sylvia has thrown into their marriage, Stevie and Martin are clearly well-matched. These are people who have a multitude of shared experiences and tastes in common; they even crack inside jokes during the all-out verbal battle that results from Martin’s affair, making the rupture of their obvious camaraderie all the more tragic and painful to watch.
Henry Haggard’s Ross is great fun. He’s a refreshing type: a bluff, uncompromising realist who calls a spade a spade, the fresh smells of the country “cow shit,” and Martin a “goat-fucker.” In all honesty, any line-up of characters benefits from someone who cuts through the bullshit and brings the conversation around to tits or dicks. It makes the dialogue infinitely more entertaining. The character of Ross seems to serve mostly as an X-rated form of comic release, but he is a primary catalyst in the events that transpire. And Andy Kanies does very well with the role of Billy, Martin and Stevie’s teenage son. While Mr. Kanies began rather nervously (and had a tendency to express those nerves in somewhat distracting hand movements), he soon hit his stride and was absolutely fantastic in the challenging third act. Albee didn’t spare his youngest character any punches; and the role of Billy requires as much passion and honesty as any other. His fury at his father (which becomes tempered with pity) and his eager desire to protect his mother, along with the added element of his homosexuality, make him far more than the typical two-dimensional portrait of a teenager.
The set is beautiful; apt in its conception and exquisitely executed. This is, after all, the home of an architect, and Gary C. Hoff has cannily captured the peculiar blend of industrial-meets-organic interior design favored by men of that profession (and which eloquently touches upon the urban-versus-country subtext of the play, as it is Martin’s quest for a pastoral utopia that introduces him to Sylvia in the first place). The table legs are tree limbs made of steel; river rock, leather, rich wood, and water features are used to great effect; and the minimalist art on the walls provides spots of vibrant color amidst the natural elements and earth tones of the contemporary furniture. A special shout-out is especially due to Kate Foreman for providing an abundance of permanent-looking and attractive props that can be smashed to smithereens every evening. The costuming is similarly flawless. (Bravo, Trish Clark; particularly for Stevie’s creamy second-act ensemble, which reappears with great effect in the conclusion of the play.)
All in all, it is an incredibly strong production; when considering the difficulty of the material and how smoothly and effectively it is presented, the only criticisms that can be made seem insignificant and are the sorts of things that will inevitably smooth themselves out during the course of the run. The destruction in the woman-scorned rampage was just a shade tentative (which is not surprising, considering few productions regularly encourage actors to throw the furniture around with reckless abandon). And the powers that be might want to move the seats a little further from the stage, or encourage eye protection for those ticketholders in the front rows, as the shrapnel from the aforementioned rampage seemed to fly a little further than anticipated. (Also, in an entirely personal matter of taste, I wasn’t an enormous fan of the music used to segue from act to act.)
In short, The Goat is one of the funniest and most uniquely enjoyable theatre experiences you’re likely to have this year. It dances lustily onto ground brave men have feared to tread; and challenges societal notions about love, sex, commitment, and normalcy that most people hold inviolable. You’ll laugh out loud (abundantly), you’ll gasp with shock (frequently), and I can guarantee an ending that will elicit a strong reaction. Whether it will startle you into silence or make you roar with sheer delight in its ballsiness, is something you’ll have to determine for yourself; but I assure you that you will leave the theatre lost in thought… and unable to look at a goat the same way again.
Originally published by the Nashville Edge, 2007-2008.
May 6, 2009 at 11:23 pm | writings | No comment