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Edward Albee is not a playwright for the faint-hearted. He draws his material from way, way out on the fringe and approaches it from unexpected and disturbing angles. His recent The Play about the Baby was a prime example. Sometimes it can be difficult to see beyond Albee's confronting imagery to the underlying theme. And it doesn't come much more confronting than The Goat or Who is Sylvia?
Martin (Philip Quast) is a successful architect, happily married. Then his perfect life shatters when he confides to his best friend Ross (Peter Curtin) that he is having an affair. With a goat.
It's funny, shocking, disturbing, sad and tragic by turns. And also very literate and entertaining, Albee's trademark obsession with language shining through. Witness the playful word games indulged in by all members of the family, even in the midst of terrible rage and the destruction of their lives.
The Goat boasts a superb cast. Wendy Hughes is magnificent as Martin's wife Stevie. And surely only an actor of Quast's calibre could carry off the disturbing yet very sympathetic role of the goat-lover, Martin. Simon Corfield ably supports them as their emotionally vulnerable son Billy, and Curtin as their "best friend" Ross.
It is not a play about bestiality, although this is the kick Albee has used to lay open his story. Instead, The Goat looks at how we treat those who act outside the norm. He has used an extreme example; but Ross' choice to punish rather than help his friend is a demonstration of the self-righteousness, judgementalism and hypocrisy of society towards anyone who is "different".
The Goat or Who is Sylvia? isn't an easy play to approach. It needs an open mind and a willingness to go where it takes you. But it is intelligent, involving and entirely worth the effort.
