Getting Albee’s “Goat”

When Edward Albee’s The Goat opened in New York in March 2002, it was his first play on Broadway in nineteen years. Most of the critics welcomed him back, but many were thrown off by the “bizarre” subject matter. How often, after all, does a serious drama by a major playwright come along, dealing with what is probably the last taboo of all, bestiality?

The Critics’ Pros and Cons
Ben Brantley of the NEW YORK TIMES, recognizing “some of the most potentially most powerful scenes in the Albee canon”, agreed that it was indeed good to have him back, “even wearing (Wait for it!) kid gloves”. Critic David Spencer of New York’s AISLE SAY, (Itself not a bad pun!) coined an admirable phrase in describing the hero’s fatal weakness as “passion beyond reason” and cited the play’s “shifting tone as it moved from domestic drama to black comedy to suburban Greek Tragedy”.

The Hartford, Conn. Reviewer Malcolm Johnson, came right out with it: “A play calculated to offend”. Another reported feeling “Electric jolts of energy! We need that: Boy, do we need that!” To Christopher Isherwood of VARIETY, The Goat was a “remarkable play & brave and fine and unflinching”. USA TODAY disagreed, calling it a “self-indulgent mess”, in which Albee’s “disdainful view of family life reaches its nauseating nadir. David Sorrells called it” puzzling, powerful, bawdy, disturbing and deeply weird. “And the Philadelphia Inquirer on the subject of sex with animals remarked drily, “It’s consequences are limited – unless, of course, you’re the goat.” Clive Barnes of the New York Post called it “enthralling & though for the weak of stomach it could be tough going. You have been warned.”

Fatal Interview
the play itself, the interview between Martin and Ross is the first crucial moment, the point where the fates take over the destinies of the protagonists. From then on, the feeling of Greek Tragedy, of Nemesis becomes increasingly palpable. Martin’s inability to concentrate, causes him to wonder “Maybe it’s love or something.” At which, Ross pounces: “You’re having an affair!” Soon Martin is pouring out his darkest secret, confident that it will go no further. This turns out to be the biggest mistake of his life.

That night, out of misplaced loyalty and “meaning well”, Ross writes the whole story to Stevie – an action that will change all their lives. How much mischief, how much sheer evil is let loose in the world by just those two words, “meaning well”? They are the key to open Pandora’s Box, which, once open, can never be closed again.

The Confrontation
Scene 2 is the play’s centrepiece, a long lacerating confrontation that is not only emotionally shattering, but at times extremely funny. In it the wife Stevie earns a place in Albee’s Gallery of Singular Females from Grandma in The American Dream to Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia.

At it’s conclusion, she exits, uttering the tremendous threat: “You have brought me down, and, by Christ! I’ll bring you down with me!” This precipitates one of the most horrendous denouements in all drama. To find its like in the line of pity and terror, one must go clear back to the Ancients, remembering that the Greek word “Tragoedia” means “Goat Song” and refers to the Hymn to Dionysius which is at the roots of modern theatre.

Fortunately The Goat never once topples over into farce, even tho’ having sex with animals has often been the subject of comedy. Think of the many disguises Jupiter (or Jove) has to assume so as to have his jovial way with ladies he fancies – with Leda a swan, with Europa a bull, and with Danae, a shower of golden coins (at least she could keep the change).

Final Plea for Understanding
Stevie’s ultimate act of vengeance is beyond understanding, all but beyond forgiveness. But it does serve to purge the earth of what most people would consider a pestilence and a curse. Being, in Albee’s own words, a plea for tolerance, The Goat dares to suggest that even the most flawed and confused human beings deserve compassion and understanding. Failure to provide these most basic needs of the human soul constitutes a form of bestiality far worse that the sexual kind.

The final curtain cannot be the end of the story for Martin and his family. One can only hope that there will be some kind of reconciliation for all of them…that, and mutual forgiveness. That’s the least they deserve.

The Goat and Virginia Woolf
In passing should be mentioned the oft-discussed similarities between The Goat and Virginia Woolf, Albee’s earlier marriage-battlefield play, which until now has always been considered the last word in dramatised marital destruction. There the battling couple, George and Martha, are two battle-scarred campaign veterans who actually seem to take sadistic pleasure in the carnage they’re creating, but The Goat is much more serious and much, much sadder. It is also seasoned by some of the funniest laugh-lines Albee has ever provided.

Edward Albee and Vienna’s English Theatre
This European premiere is the latest in a long and mutually rewarding relationships between the playwright and Vienna’s English Theatre, dating from 1974 and the double-bill of The Zoo Story and Counting the Ways, likewise a European First. It gained fresh impetus a year later, when Mr. Albee brought us an evening of four one-act plays by Pulitzer Prize-winners, including his own The Sandbox, directed, as almost always, by himself. The world premiere of his Marriage Play followed in 1987, and in 1990, that of Three Tall Women, which won him his third Pulitzer Prize

Herbert Moulton