"The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?" is less about bestiality than incest. Edward Albee, with David Esbjornson his directorial Svengali, marvelously mixes his metaphors, turning points into paradoxes.
Martin (Bill Pullman) is world-renowned, architecture's newest Pritzker Prize winner. He loves wife Stevie (Mercedes Ruehl), gay son Billy (Jeffrey Carlson), slimy pal Ross (Stephen Rowe), and nanny goat, Sylvia.
That's paradox #1, for the bestiality theme is both an asset and a flaw. A flaw in that it's a hard sell--some will find it repugnant and even unlikely in a play adorned with Albee's most naturalistic writing in years. By weaving in other more stylized moments, Albee and Esbjornson, atop John Arnone's natural habitat of a set, pull and push you in and out until you're exhausted, your imagination piqued.
But are you moved? That's paradox #2. The bald exposition, the way Martin's affair is exposed, the way word play is overused to define character--all oddly alienate. While Rowe, Carlson, and especially Ruehl operate with colossal emotion, Pullman's portrayal is curiously tempered, evenly pitched. And that's paradox #3, for the affair's revelation makes a fireball of Martin's world.
Indeed, as Albee's scenes reach volcanic proportions, Ruehl, her voice rangy as a clarinet, delivers monumental arias with shocking, stunning emotional clarity. Buffeted by disbelief, bewilderment, and betrayal, her primal cries are unlike anything one hears in the theatre anymore. How fitting that Albee's second subtitle is "Notes on the Definition of a Tragedy."
But now, back to the incest. While Carlson's Billy is finely wrought, his character's name is no accident. For me, the goat is a metaphor for Martin's latent homosexuality, or just sexual deviance. He hasn't known of Billy's orientation for long; the shock, disappointment, and/or trauma may have catalyzed some long-dormant desires in him. Even Albee makes the case when anguished Billy kisses Martin for a long beat.
But the play's unquestionable strength lies in its interpretative malleability. For that reason, "The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?" kicks butt. The question is whose.