Reviews

The Goat: Or, Who is Sylvia? by Edward Albee

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cantordustbunnies's review against another edition

4.0

This play is about the weird, shameful, aberrant, creepy desires people have and society's reactions to them. I think everyone at some point in their life has had a dream or a thought at least once that they are disturbed, repulsed, or confused by and are very quick to pretend never happened. Some people, for one reason or another, actually act on these impulses. It's very easy to judge or to laugh at the characters in this play but when you honestly look at your own life you're probably more like them than you would like to admit. These characters just happen to be exceptionally open about it. The characters know on a societal level that their impulses are wrong, but feel inside that they are totally natural. What we think is inherently wrong or perverse is more subject to the culture in which we live than we would probably like to admit. This play definitely has a postmodernist tone. Thankfully, this play does not go as far to justify or condone damaging sexual behaviors. It merely poses the question and opens some uncomfortable, taboo doors and perhaps prods us to be more adult about the whole thing. That being said I thought the humour in the play was a little too silly and served to dampen the impact. I also disliked the implication that homosexuality is perverse or inherently fetishistic, but perhaps this was an intentional point designed to drive home the idea that societal standards can be arbitrary. Ultimately it is intensely thought provoking, funny, and uncomfortable.

amysutton's review against another edition

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1.0

I think this one might have been more impacting had I seen it performed. The idea of the play -- a man forms a relationship with a goat, and it tears his family apart -- was really interesting. The wife, Stevie, was probably my favorite character as she slowly went insane from desperation.

Albee said that his intent with the play was to make people "think afresh about whether or not all the values they hold are valid." I'm not sure that it did that for me. I think the point of the play was not to focus on the goat being a goat per se, but instead to look at how love changes and adapts and how monogamy breaks down. The goat was merely comic relief.

(the rest of the review is a spoiler, but it's the reason I think I liked this play less, so read if you want...)

I didn't understand the relationship between Martin and his gay son Billy. There's obviously tension in that the parents think that Billy is merely going through a phase, so his lifestyle is constantly disregarded or made to be a joke. Then... at the climax of the scene after Stevie has stormed out, Billy runs in and starts screaming at his dad Martin which eventually leads to Billy screaming that he loves him, and running at Martin and kissing him sexually. The play then goes on for Martin to confess that when Billy was a baby, he was bouncing on Martin's lap one day and Martin got a (claimed to be non-sexual) boner.

I just don't understand this part of the play. It was as if all characters were kind of going insane and the implication is that Billy's sexuality stemmed from a deep seated mental instability. Martin begins to defend Billy's Father complex. I felt like Martin is just sexually misguided in all ways, and the idea was that Billy being gay was almost a trait passed down through having to be around Martin's perversion. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong, but that whole part of the play was just way out of left field, and I didn't understand it. Mostly, I just feel like I missed something considering that Albee himself is gay and probably isn't making those implications. I just can't figure out why.