What can you do if everything you know falls apart? If your marriage was essentially perfect, but your spouse's affair involved something utterly absurd, perverse and ultimately unforgivable?
Superficially, the premise of Live Arts's production of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? as a story on the consequences of adultery doesn't seem too original, but the key twist is hilarious, disturbing and controversial, thereby providing a quite novel experience. The play's parenthetical label, "Notes toward the definition of a tragedy," provides the appropriate and intriguing summary of the script's theme. Warning to the easily bothered: This show truly is only for a mature, open-minded audience.
The entire story occurs within two days in the intimate setting of a living room carefully decorated in contemporary style. The superb cast consists of only four characters: husband Martin, wife Stevie, their teenage son Billy and best family friend Ross.
The adulterer is Martin (Bill LeSueur), a dreamy, idealistic, absent-minded architect. Your instinct is to recoil at his confessions and disdain his actions, but you can't help but pity and sympathize with him as well. Daria Okugawa marvelously plays Stevie as a dry-witted, passionate and eventually furious woman who deeply loves her husband but suffers the ultimate betrayal. Her waxing and waning rage is palpable as the tension between the two of them fills the entire room. Their gay son Billy (aptly named in The Goat), played by Casey Wagner, is the typical angsty teenager but has a good sense of humor and clearly loves and respects his parents.
So how can you sympathize with an adulterer, exactly? Martin says that they've "always been good together" and that he never felt the need to stray. So why now? Why with such an unusual object of affection? He's swept up in love in such a way that he can neither really explain nor control it. Martin tells Stevie, "I love you and I love her. And there it is."
The family chemistry between the cast members was utterly natural as they wrestled with rather unusual circumstances. Such interactions were vital, as one of the main themes throughout the production was the tragic splintering of a tight-knit, affectionate family.
Love, trust and betrayal are at the heart of the show, as they are twisted, manipulated and ultimately destroyed. No one remains innocent by the end; the ties of family and friendship are no longer secure but torn to shreds. How can you possibly go on living when that happens? That is the critical question underlying The Goat.
Award-winning playwright Edward Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) explores love and its many different forms -- romantic, friendly, family, forbidden -- and adds healthy splashes of humor, wit and sarcasm to the potentially gloomy and depressing story. The dialogue was snappy and intelligent. While trying to understand her husband's motivations, Stevie says, "If I'm going to kill you, I need to know exactly why."
The audience was carried along by the writing and the actors' performances, laughing at appropriate times to occasionally inappropriate jokes that diffused the heavy tension between the characters.
The final feeling from the show is somber and cheerless, despite its intelligent and often hilarious execution. Ultimately, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? examines its characters and their tragic, awful situation in such a way that it won't leave your mind anytime soon.
The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? is playing at Live Arts on the Downtown Mall through Feb. 16.
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