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In The Goat, or, Who is Sylvia?, an ostensibly normal family man, an architect who's designing a "world city," quite literally falls in love with an animal.
But despite the difficult, disturbing and distasteful subject matter, Edward Albee's Tony Award-winning play manages to be entertaining and thought provoking.
Screamingly funny, too.
Now onstage in a first-class Philadelphia Theatre Company production, The Goat wisely spares the audience most of the details of the preposterous relationship that propels Martin (Broadway veteran John Glover, who's superb) into a head-on collision with the three human beings he most dearly loves.
But The Goat is unsparing in its depiction of a man who ruins himself, his wife (the skillful and affecting Elizabeth Norment), his son (Bradford William Anderson, who's just right) and his best friend (Tom Teti, likewise effective) because of an inexplicable attachment he can neither fathom nor control.
"You have brought me down," Stevie (Martin's wife) says, after he has revealed his rather astonishing infidelty and she has trashed their oh-so-stylish metropolitan living room (and with it, Albee subtly implies, civilization and its facile contentments). So true: A man who otherwise seems like the decent chap has debased himself during a barnyard encounter, throwing caution, common decency and common sense to the winds in pursuit of something far less than the all-consuming love he imagines it to be.
Or could it be he's not delusional? Could it be this "affair" truly is fulfilling? And aren't we all just needy flesh-and-blood animals?
Mind you, in raising these questions Albee is hardly promoting bestiality (as if something so repulsive could be promoted); clearly, there's a metaphorical, if not allegorical, dimension to The Goat, or, Who is Sylvia? But the playwright, who has had his artistic and commercial vicissitudes, is so utterly in command of his art that the audience easily follows him into the play's strange landscape.
One does not have to be a pervert to love an animal; who hasn't mourned the loss of a family pet?
But at the same time, Martin has gone so far into uncharted territory he has clearly lost any claim to possessing a moral compass, his earnest, even eloquent rhapsodies about the joys of furry communion notwithstanding.
The PTC production is handsome and director Tim Vasen expertly orchestrates the snap, crackle and pop without which this odd, off-putting but deeply moving play might fall to pieces on the stage.
It doesn't. And the final scene likely will haunt your dreams.
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