Photos courtesy of Keith Ian Polakoff. Roma Maffia and Tyler Bremer (center) with Brian Mulligan (right).
“Is there anything anybody doesn’t get off on? Whether we admit it or not? Whether we know it or not?”
I have always been conflicted by living in a society that is fully aware of our irrational—and sometimes frightening—animalistic nature, yet spends most of its time pretending like these core elements of our beings don’t exist. The normalcy of human life, as we are supposed to portray it publicly, is a sexless and composed existence. Anyone threatening that quiet, unnatural state of life is often chastised and labeled as some sort of pervert or slut, a fate that leads many of us to repression and, even more so, rage and unthinkable actions. To find a place of balance is one of the great struggles of the human existence, and to my mind, one of the most fascinating.
The blurry lines between love and lust and what is moral and immoral, lay at the core of Edward Albee’s controversial 2002 tragi-comedy The Goat or, Who Is Silvia?, which is currently being offered in a new production by the California Repertory Company (CalRep) at the Royal Theater aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach.
The Goat is a play that is as fierce and terrifying as it is funny and perverse—a fact that this production is luckily not only aware of but in-tune with. The story is a linear and logical (to an extent) narrative, but also absurd and allegorical, leaving its audience laughing and sometimes retching, one after the other. To my taste, there are few plays that pose such profound, ambiguous questions about the nature of love and lust as succinctly as this one.
Martin (Brian Mulligan) has just had his 50th birthday and he is strangely out of sorts. From the very beginning, he seems uncomfortable and confused, confessing to his wife Stevie (Roma Maffia) that he can’t seem to remember many important things, such as his best friend Ross’s (Christopher Shaw) son’s name or where the business cards in his pocket came from. Something is obviously off though unless you are familiar with the source material, chances are you are not prepared for what that something is.
Stevie leaves the house and Ross arrives to interview Martin for a television show. Soon, we learn that Martin is a hugely successful architect who has recently received not only an incredibly prestigious award but has also been selected to design some sort of futuristic, utopian city somewhere in America’s midwest. Martin’s contrary and distracted manner makes the interviewing process impossible and Ross stops the camera to try and figure out why his friend is behaving the way he is. After much coaxing Martin finally caves in and admits that he is having an affair. His affair is not with another human being however; no indeed: he is having an affair with the play’s namesake.
Martin is having an affair with Silvia and Silvia is a goat.
In the following scene, Stevie receives a letter from Ross that explains the goat situation and from that point on, all hell breaks loose. As Stevie listens to her husband attempt to explain himself and she articulates her bewilderment and disgust, she tears the house apart, an act that physicalizes the internal feelings of all of Martin’s family.
Martin’s affair with Silvia is not a mere circumstance of beastiality though that may be the way that it first appears. He explains to Stevie that he is both physically and emotionally in love with Silvia and that this is the only time he has ever been in love besides when he met his wife. He also states that his dilemma comes from being in love with his wife and another being, not the fact that that the other being is an animal outside of his species.
This conflict is at the plot’s center, with Martin unable to see why Silvia being a goat is such an awful thing if she makes him happy, and his surrounding family unable to see past the perversion of Martin’s love.
The situation is possibly most confusing to Martin’s 17-year-old and openly gay son Billy (Tyler Bremer), whose perception of the universe is already conflicted before he discovers that his father is in fact a “goat fucker”—the character’s words, not mine—something that obviously makes things a little more difficult to deal with.
In the final scene, the ambiguity of many other types of perverse lust are suggested, making it clear that this play is more about the blurry lines of human eroticism and love than it is about the questionable perversions of the characters at hand.
This all unfolds in a far funnier fashion than I could convey by simply providing a bit of a synopsis. To paraphrase something Stevie says in scene two, things are far too serious not to be laughed at—though I will also add that The Goat is far too funny to not consider it seriously. Humor often comes out of shock or acute observation. We laugh when things make us uncomfortable and when life comes together in a bizarre or unexpected manner. Albee is a master of these sorts of situations and though this play may not be his masterpiece—that privilege arguably belongs to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf—The Goat is unquestionably a thought-provoking and emotionally visceral work of art.
CalRep is part of California State University Long Beach’s graduate training program and is made up of “actors, designers, and theatre managers who are preparing to become the artists and leaders in the theater of the future.” They consistently pick topical and boundary pushing new works—this play being no exception to that rule.
The cast is all believable and humane, even when the characters are at their most obscene. The audience can understand what the characters are feeling with an ease that is necessary for this play to be successful.
Brian Mulligan’s Martin has a sort of Woody Allen-ish air about him, but he is not as neurotic and far more emotionally engaged than Allen tends to be. He is convincing and sympathetic in a truly difficult role to play, and his understated performance is the very backbone of the show. Tyler Bremer is also successfully understated as Martin’s son Billy, finding a delicate balance between being a child, and a young adult, without playing into any stereotypically homosexual or child like behaviors. Christopher Shaw is also an asset as Ross, playing both the loving and enraged variations of his character with aplomb.
However, it is Roma Maffia’s Stevie—originally played by Mercedes Ruehl and Sally Field in the play’s initial Broadway run—that really steals the show.
The second scene of the play, in which Stevie purges up all of her anger and confusion to both Martin and the audience is a tour de force. Though Miss Maffia is taller and less mousy than I have often seen Stevie played (re: Field), she creates not only a well of emotion for the character, but also allows us to see her deep-rooted love of Martin through all of her disgust and rage. She is also on point with her comedic timing, making us laugh just as often as we gasp.
In other words, she would make Albee proud.
Aside from a bit of an awkward start where Stevie and Martin’s tension and chemistry feels a bit forced, James Martin’s direction is clear and handsome, making great use out of the intimate space that the Royal Theater provides. All important moments hit home: very few laughs are missed and the impending tragedy of the play’s conclusion is earned quite respectfully. One gets the feeling pretty early on that this director and his cast understand the source material as much as they respect it, and this makes sitting through this sometimes difficult play much easier.
Lighting Design by Jonathan de Roulet seems unnaturally bright for the household, but it is serviceable and not distracting.
My only real quandry about this production is its set design: the living room—where all the action takes place—feels strangely like the 1980s for the time that the play is set, especially for the house of such a renowned architect. It also feels strangely artificial and theatrical in ways that don’t really make much sense to me with cryptic patches of black all throughout the houses walls, and windows that seem purposefully artificial but without much reasoning behind them being so do. These choices do more to confuse than enhance the action on stage. Luckily for us however, the action is enough to distract us from the set.
Albee’s theater is not a place where one goes to find out the answers in life. It treats the theater as a place where we all go to question ourselves and confront our fears. Regardless of whether or not you will like The Goat, I guarantee that it will make you question and consider the elements of your own relationship with love, lust, and instinct. This is a play that you will likely remember for a long time. See it while you can.
For more information and tickets, click here.
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