There's a terrible question lurking in and around Edward Albee's The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?, currently playing in a superb production at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. This question, simply put, is: What if there were no rules? What if everything that passes for law on this earth were arbitrary, arguable, the work of fallible humans and thus fallible itself? If you sense a theological dimension to this question, you're absolutely right; Ivan Karamazov was on to it when he said, in what is perhaps Dostoevsky's most famous line, "If there is no God, then everything is permitted."
Is everything permitted? When Martin Gray, the protagonist of The Goat, speaks of a group therapy session for people having sex with animals, he says, in all sincerity, "I didn't understand … what was wrong with being in love like that." And later in the play, when his son Billy, at a moment of high emotion, kisses his father sexually, Martin says, "If it clicks over and becomes … sexual for just a moment, so what?! So fucking what?!" Bestiality, incest, pederasty, all the sexual crimes — are they crimes only because we allow ourselves to think them so? At the base — or the summit — is there no Ultimate Legislator? Is what passes for moral law just the prejudice of the moment?
These are just some of the questions raised by what must be the most provocative American play of the last quarter century. The Goat is about a world-famous architect who has just turned 50, is a winner of the coveted Pritzker Prize, and has been chosen to design a futuristic World City in the American Midwest.
Martin Gray is happily married, gets on well with his gay adolescent son, and is working on a TV interview when the interviewer, his old friend Ross, insists on learning why Martin is so distracted. Martin reluctantly admits (off-camera) that he's in love — and that the beloved is a goat he met at the crest of a hill. And yes, he's having sex with her, and yes, it's genuine amour, and it's been going on now for six joyful months. Ross is scandalized and, shortly afterward, tells everything to Martin's wife, Stevie. She's furious, and for most of the play, we watch her painful, reproachful confrontation with anguished Martin. (Son Billy's no less shocked: "You're doing what?! You're fucking a goat?!"). Finally, all Martin can do is beg for understanding, for tolerance and for forgiveness. But it may be too late: as Stevie says, "You've broken something and it can't be fixed."
So what's the play really about? Several things, I'd say. First there's the subtitle of the published version, "Notes toward a definition of tragedy." The ancient Greek word "tragedy" literally means "goat song," for reasons that no modern can explain (a goat sacrificed at the annual festival during which plays were produced? A goat awarded as a prize?)
Albee seems to be searching here for a clue to tragedy's roots, and one can't help but sense a pagan resonance in this story of man and animal, recalling satyrs, sileni, Leda and the Swan. Then there's the Kabbalistic interpretation: Stevie is enraged that Martin "can do these … things … and not understand how it … SHATTERS THE GLASS!!??" In Kabbalistic lore, evil came to the world when certain vessels designed to hold God's light instead shattered, mixing light with darkness. Since Stevie spends a good part of the play smashing dishes and vases and overturning tables, one can't help but feel that Albee is aiming at the illustration of some ur-myth about an ancient, fundamental crime that put time out of joint.
In either case — the Greek or the Kabbalistic — it seems Albee is aspiring to something mythic in this surprising play, not just an assault on our moral sense, but a look at First Things, Original Sin. The question of where we get our values — is everything permitted? — is there all right, but there's more.
And if we feel the full force of The Goat's many meanings, the thanks goes to the abundantly talented actors and director of this Jobsite Theater production. First among equals is Steven Clark Pachosa, who as the much-maligned Martin gives the performance of a lifetime. I've had reason to admire the gifted Pachosa's work many times before, but he outdoes himself in The Goat, showing us a Martin who's so in love that he can't bear to hear his Sylvia disparaged, who reacts to his wife's anger with hurt and torment and a desperate desire to be understood.
Pachosa's Martin hasn't stopped loving Stevie; but love of the goat has overtaken him and so surprised and delighted him that he can't always hold back his joy at describing her and her "guileless" face. As the outraged Stevie, Monica Merryman is impeccable: She interprets Martin's infatuation not as a mental sickness but as a willful affront to her and to her marriage. Albee asks that the actress playing Stevie remain incensed for long minutes of the play, and Merryman manages it without ever becoming monotonous or the least bit predictable. This is anger of 11 types, from sharp-tongued sarcasm to howling pain, and everything in between.
As son Billy, Eric Burgess is convincingly sensitive, confused, combative; and as Martin's friend Ross, Ward Smith is every bit the concerned buddy who can't, in good conscience, keep a secret from Stevie. (I wonder, though, if Smith looks too young to play Martin's friend of 40 years).
Karla Hartley's direction is splendid, allowing all characters to travel to depths of emotion that most actors only dream of, and Hartley's design of an upper-middle-class living room is just fine (though I'd add more books to that anemic-looking bookcase). In all aspects of production, this is a show the Jobsite Theater can be proud of.
And it's a show that I'd recommend to any thinking adult. It asks us to review our deepest principles, our faith, our sense of world order or disorder; and it does so efficiently, in 90 uninterrupted minutes of sharp dialogue and searching emotion.
What's at the core of things: law or anarchy? Are there lines that we dare not cross, or are they only drawn in chalk, one day to be washed away, replaced by others? Essentially: Can you sympathize with Martin Gray, or has he sinned? And by what standard?
See this fine play and you'll not only be entertained, you'll be challenged to remember — and examine — your deepest beliefs.
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 4, 2006.