The first time I saw Edward Albee’s THE GOAT (OR WHO IS
SYLVIA?) I was convinced it was a comedy… or an absurdist allegory at the
least. The Lyric Stage had two of Boston’s
best comic actors wrestling with Albee’s beastly conundrum. Can a man fall head
over heels in love with a four legged creature? And what will his wife have to
say about it! As I recall, the audience laughed almost all the way through.
Then I saw Bad Habit Productions’ deadly serious version this
week (ending August 23rd) and I’m convinced it’s an out and out
tragedy. THE GOAT won the Tony for best play in 2002 and boy is it prescient a
decade or more later. When the wife finds out about her architect/husband’s
bizarre paramour, she imagines she could cope with a human rival or a husband
who likes to “try on her dresses” but this she cannot withstand.
Albee offers up everyone’s point of view (i.e. the friend,
the wife, the husband, the son) except the title character. Why not? The wife
suggests in one of her magnificent tirades, that it’s rape. If we’re to take
the story as gospel and not as metaphor (Evangelicals still denounce
homosexuality as “unnatural,” never mind sex with another species!), then
someone has to worry about the sentient being who literally becomes the
scapegoat.
So rather than proceed with my own tirade on animal rights, I
shall opt for the symbolism in THE GOAT. The wife proclaims that her husband’s
behavior is “outside the rules,” territory Albee traversed more than a few
times. His plays were denounced. His homosexuality was condemned and rather
than celebrate his work, no Pulitzer was awarded the year he was the finalist (for
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?). Talk about scapegoats.
Director Daniel Morris’ shattering production has at its core
the remarkable performance of Veronica Anastasio Wiseman as the profoundly
wounded wife. First you watch her heart bleed out through her pores; Then yours
begins to break. Luke Murtha, also, as the completely overwhelmed son, wins our
affection and our most tender sympathies, as his world slips into “a hole we’ll
never be able to dig our way out of.” Morris and company have crafted an
exquisite catastrophe from Albee’s sorrowful, penetrating script.
