The Stratford Theatre Review: The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?

By Ross

The set-up is deliciously simple, square, and angled symmetrically, with flowers arranged just so by the fantastic Lucy Peacock (Stratford’s Les Belles-Soeurs) who is playing big and powerful as Stevie, the wife of Martin. “When does Ross arrive?” she calls out to her distracted husband, captivatingly well-played by Rick Roberts (Stratford’s Cymbeline), as Edward Albee’s aggressively engaging play, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? revs itself up to ring the first bell of this fight to the finish. This may not be his most famous play, even though it won the 2002 Tony Award for Best Play, the 2002 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, and was named a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. That honor most likely lives with the phenomenal, and equality taunt play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which, as it turns out, is getting a pretty starry remount courtesy of Canadian Stage in early 2025 (a production that I can not wait to see). Yet, this play directed beautifully by Dean Gabourie, the founding artistic director of the ACME Theatre Company, is definitely one to sit up and take notice of.

It’s absurdist, almost from the get-go, but there’s also a fascinating humanity at its core as we watch Martin, who is having one solidly good week, having won a prestigious architecture award as he also celebrates turning 50 years old. And to shine a light on this achievement, his good friend, Ross, played forcibly by Matthew Kabwe (Stratford’s Love’s Labour’s Lost), is coming over today to interview him, like he has done in the past. But this time, the interview process hits a few bumps along the round. Martin is having a difficult time concentrating. He’s forgetting where he is in the midst of a conversation. He’s distracted and easily confused. Something is up, and after pulling at Martin’s string for a few beats, Ross gets the answer he half thought he was going to get. But the other half of that equation is something completely off-centered, shocking, and distressing.

It turns out, in one of many playful interactions he has with his wife, Stevie, he let the proverbial cat out of the bag. Or should we say, the goat, but Peacock’s Stevie doesn’t pick up on the truth laid so casually in her lap. It’s just too absurd to even take seriously. So chuckling at his bad ‘joke’, she leaves him to his friend and the interview, with little thought about how that moment was going to be the last time these two held a civilized compassionate conversation filled with playful love and care. Serious trouble was coming fast.

We know, and we see the edges of this perfect square starting to become frayed; damaged and destroyed by what Martin is experiencing and reporting. And when he finally is taken seriously, first in person with Ross, and then later, when Ross feels he has to write down this confession in a letter and send it off to his friend and Martin’s wife, Stevie, it’s like the well-positioned floor, designed most solidly by set and costume designer Shawn Kerwin (Belfry’s The Lehman Trilogy), rises and shakes it all apart, as if their world has been struck by a very personal earthquake. And that earthquake takes the form of Peacock’s formidable Stevie and her circling back in confusion and distress to a topic too shocking to be formalized and reframed.

“You’re fucking a fucking goat!” is the deceptively simple punch thrown in abundance, by Stevie after reading the letter, and by their son, the under-used, and even less-developed character of Billy, portrayed magnificently, against all odds, by Anthony Palermo (Theatre Erindale’s The Witch of Edmonton). More could have been done with the way homophobic insults are thrown against their son in defensive, unthinking abandonment, but more often than not, the play leaves them there, without digging into the possible meaning. Maybe it felt too dangerous at the time of the writing to even go there. People walked out of the Broadway production in disgust over his deep dark love secret, but now it seems this framing of “perversion” can be something we can take in, unpack, and digest metaphorically.

Martin confesses that he’s in love with someone named Sylvia – “with whom you are having an affair” and, as it turns out, this just happens to be a goat he met on an outing in the countryside. That story, and its implications, both sexually and emotionally, pull apart the framework of this orderly home, inciting destruction and anger in abundance as they circle each other in the disintegrating space. The battle is both relentless and hilarious, displaying and throwing into the ring the complexities of marriage and love, alongside the complications and limits of what can be tolerated and accepted.

“You’re fucking a fucking goat!” she repeats, as does Billy, time and time again as if to try to wrap their heads around an impossible idea that is throwing their seemingly perfect world up into the air. And as we watch it crash down around them, Stevie continues to demand a discussion. She seems to need something from him, as she continues to attack and destroy, unleashing revenge for all the cracks created in her family’s home, and their survival. It’s compelling, touching, and achingly difficult, while also being absurdly funny and ferociously hilarious.

The production flies forward once that letter has been received, with all the characters flinging themselves into the muck to the intro-sounds of Cole Porter, at first singing the seemingly sweet “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love)” by Porter himself, then Ella Fitzgerald, and finally a version that feels as broken as the set and their marriage. Delivered well by sound designer Adam Campbell (Captial’s Jack! A Beanstalk Panto), with lighting by Kaileigh Krysztoflak (Stratford’s Hedda Gabler), the mature themes that we were warned about, which include talk of bestiality, incest, and death, find their way in with an acknowledgment that hangs on the borders of brutal honesty and societal sexual taboo. Few could mesh these frameworks together as remarkably as Albee does, in such an unapologetic and remarkably funny way, rarely giving a respite from the chaotic destruction, but he does it, and he does it supremely well. As does the cast.

The humor and the horror intermingle, as the subject matter is grappled with in the space that represents order and family. Albee, it seems, was questioning, among other concepts, social morality concerning complex sexual taboos, the perception of female identity by contrasting and comparing Stevie to Sylvia, and also the arbitrary nature of social standards and conventions by juxtaposing Martin’s distaste for homosexuality with his bestiality. Billy’s complex character involvement is somewhat tossed aside as bigger, bloodier problems get dragged in and unpacked.

But in this polished and exacting production of Edward Albee’s The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?, the performances are what pull this play through, expanding on the magnificently blood-curdling cries that come from Stevie and extending to the tableau that leaves us breathless. “This isn’t the stuff that stops a career in its tracks for a little while: humiliation, public remorse, and then back up again,” Ross tells Martin. “This is beyond that, way beyond it!” It’s a tragedy to be reckoned with and unpacked. And here, in the intimate Studio Theatre at the Stratford Festival, the astonishing conclusion lies tense and silent before us, magnificently surprising and impressive. After so many laughs about something so disturbing and devastating, this superb production leaves us mesmerized and amazed. It’s a compelling tour de force that must be seen to be believed, possibly because it is so persistent and rebelliously alive.