The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?
by Edward Albee
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Book Summary Information
Author: Edward AlbeeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-12-28
ISBN: 1585676470
Number of pages: 110
Publisher: Overlook TP
Book Reviews of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?
Book Review: Love Me, I'm a Liberal
Summary: 5 Stars
The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? is a testament to the ethical irony that 1960's folk-singer/songwriter, Phil Ochs, expresses in the introduction to his song, "Love Me, I'm a Liberal":
"In every American community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals; an outspoken group on many subjects, ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally..."
The sentiment expressed in Ochs' statement is an aphorism for what can be recognized as a central idea in The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?.
Varying degrees of deviance are attributed to those activities which are presented in this play as sexual perversion and marital infidelity: adultery, homosexuality, incest, and bestiality. All four of Albee's left-leaning upper-class characters allude to their perspective of the forgivable or acceptable nature of both adultery and homosexuality in them or in others. While our fifty-year-old tragic hero, Martin, and his seventeen-year-old son, Billy, struggle with their respective bents, the antagonists, (faithful wife, Stevie, and adulterous best-friend, Ross,) are unable to see either perversion as anything but morally twisted and devastating beyond comprehension.
Martin confesses to his lifelong friend, Ross, of his love for Sylvia, a young goat, including the detailed telling of how it was the moment that he stopped on the "crest" of a hill, (Albee's clever allusion to the literary device,) that he first noticed Sylvia, and sped downhill to meet, fall in love, and begin his affair with her. As New York Times critic, Ben Brantley, observed in his review of the Broadway production of the play, Ross' recognition of this hamartia in his friend is a catalyst that activates his own perverse morality and compels him to bring about the major turning point of the play by exposing Martin's betrayal to his wife and son.
"It is Ross, in whom Martin unwisely confides, who sets in motion the events that will destroy this family. As written and as portrayed by [Stephen] Rowe in the unctuous manner of Gig Young in a 1960's sex farce, he is the smug embodiment of liberal hypocrisy. Cheating on your wife is one thing, as Ross sees it; doing it with a goat is another. So he writes a letter to Stevie in which Martin's secret love is laid bare."
Tragedy, or "goat song", especially with respect to crises of sexual identity, is a theatrical form that continues to become increasingly relevant to members of contemporary audiences; especially those with a memory of the events of the sexual revolution in the last half of the twentieth century.
As the debate surrounding the definition of sexual identity continues, "The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?" is sustained as a valuable device to raise questions regarding what versions of sexuality ... and marital sanctity ... our political culture considers more or less deviant in relation to all other "known knowns," "known unknowns," and "unknown unknowns".
Summary of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?
Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Albee's most provocative, daring, and controversial play since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Goat won four major awards for best new play of the year (Tony, New York Drama Critics Circle, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle). In the play, Martin, a successful architect who has just turned fifty, leads an ostensibly ideal life with his loving wife and gay teenage son. But when he confides to his best friend that he is also in love with a goat (named Sylvia), he sets in motion events that will destroy his family and leave his life in tatters.The playwright himself describes it this way: "Every civilization sets quite arbitrary limits to its tolerances. The play is about a family that is deeply rocked by an unimaginable event and how they solve that problem. It is my hope that people will think afresh about whether or not all the values they hold are valid."
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