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36th out of 169 books
—
192 voters
The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?
by
Edward Albee
In the play, Martin - a hugely 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.
Paperback, 110 pages
Published
December 28th 2004
by Overlook TP
(first published May 12th 2003)
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This play is about guy who fucks a goat (which is really gross). And even though it's about a guy who fucks a goat, it's VERY GOOD!
Edward Albee is know for his ability to write plays in which each character's flaws slowly ooze out of them like sweat from a roasting pig, resulting in a combustion of relationships among the characters. in this repulsivly dark comedy about a happily married man who falls in love with a goat, Albee raises questions about the social boundaries of sex and love and what is deemed "moral" to the norm of the society. this is almost a farce to Peter Shaffer's Equus, except that Albee's message is mor...more
THE GOAT or, WHO IS SYLVIA? (2000). Edward Albee. ***.
Stevie and Martin are married and are very much in love. They do have trouble with accepting the fact that their son, Billie, is gay. We enter the play as Martin is talking with his best friend, Ross. Ross is some kind of TV host, and is attempting to film a segment on Martin and his recent success as an architect. When the session falls through, Martin and Ross begin to talk man-to-man, as old friends often will. It then comes out that Mart...more
Stevie and Martin are married and are very much in love. They do have trouble with accepting the fact that their son, Billie, is gay. We enter the play as Martin is talking with his best friend, Ross. Ross is some kind of TV host, and is attempting to film a segment on Martin and his recent success as an architect. When the session falls through, Martin and Ross begin to talk man-to-man, as old friends often will. It then comes out that Mart...more
For some reason (let’s call it 20-something-too-little-sleep-and-too-much-wine, and not what it is, which is my terrible memory) but I didn’t remember Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? was a play, until this weary-reader delighted in finding a slim volume on the self and not another (as was feared) 500 page tome (no doubt each page of the 500 page novels I’ve made my way through have been worth it, but I’m just saying, at this point in 10-10-12 I’m taking my slim volumes where I can get...more
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Oh my God. I'm still in a state of shock. Oh my God. I read the whole play in approximately an hour sitting on the couch in a trance. While this play was absolutely extraordinary, and a real masterpiece, it was probably one of the most disturbing things I've ever read. Definitely rated NC 17. Highly recommended, because it was insanely well done and the incredibly dark, difficult subject matter was handled with grace, empathy, and sophistication, but it is not light reading. It revolves around a...more
This is not really about a guy who fucks a goat (not that it couldn't be, but that only scratches the surface.) In a deeper sense, the goat is a metaphor for any unutterable desire or act that once revealed is met with repulsion, castigation, condemnation and expulsion. Although Albee is undoubtedly America's most vicious playwright (and the play has a quality of baiting the audience who will come to any play with Albee's name on it, regardless of how offensive it appears to be) his choice of a...more
Aug 01, 2009
Wayne
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
a must for everyone
Recommended to Wayne by:
a dear friend
When it was revealed to the audience that the object of the main character's affections and cause of his marital infidelity is ...a goat,
there were gales of laughter. Later I wondered how the actor felt for his character when this brutal, smug but readily understandable response was nightly unleashed. I'm sure our wonderful actor William Zappa, saw it as a challenge to have us all weeping by the finale.
This is a brilliant work of art in the form of a play.
To try to teach an audience through a wo...more
there were gales of laughter. Later I wondered how the actor felt for his character when this brutal, smug but readily understandable response was nightly unleashed. I'm sure our wonderful actor William Zappa, saw it as a challenge to have us all weeping by the finale.
This is a brilliant work of art in the form of a play.
To try to teach an audience through a wo...more
Omg I have a slew of adjectives to describe this play: intense, provocative, wild, audacious, jarring, memorable, & profound among others. I would say that I am at a loss for words, but I really just want someone to read this story so we can maturely discuss the nature of love & the depths of what can be called the soul, at least as it's all framed in the context of this story. I originally found this script through a Facebook recommendation from an old high school thespian cohort, and s...more
If you have some sort of categorical imperative concerning the morality of bestiality then just skip this book. This book isn't about just bestiality it's more about the arbitrary delineations of morality and what qualifies as human or subhuman behavior. This play is a sort of short Lolita in the barnyard, I can empathize with most of the characters in the play though Ross is pretty much despicable. The wordplay and offbeat structure of the dialog is something that I haven't found in many plays....more
Only Albee could pull this off. Shocking and thought provoking, I have some issues with it, but then again, I thought about it for days after reading it and how much modern drama does that now a days?
Review on Literatured.com:
ANCIENT TO CONTEMPORARY TRAGEDY:
Edward Albee’s The Goat; or, Who is Sylvia? has been written with explicit literary and dramatic intention, seen through the published subtitle. The aim of Albee’s play is to define modern tragedy as a contemporary adaptation of the genre from the fifth-century. Albee’s revival of theatric principles from the dramatic theory in Aristotle’s Poetics, as well as the characteristic and plot parallels between The Goat and Sophocles’ Oedipus th...more
ANCIENT TO CONTEMPORARY TRAGEDY:
Edward Albee’s The Goat; or, Who is Sylvia? has been written with explicit literary and dramatic intention, seen through the published subtitle. The aim of Albee’s play is to define modern tragedy as a contemporary adaptation of the genre from the fifth-century. Albee’s revival of theatric principles from the dramatic theory in Aristotle’s Poetics, as well as the characteristic and plot parallels between The Goat and Sophocles’ Oedipus th...more
Welcome to the quagmire of human sexuality. "The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?" (a 2002 Tony Award winner for Best Play) places the audience in the jury box. The accused are Martin, his wife Stevie and their gay teen-aged son Billy. Albee challenges us to question the nature and meaning of love. Can love and shame coexist? Who defines normal? Who, or what, has been betrayed? Who decides which behaviors are acceptable? After the evidence has been presented and issues debated we realize that this play i...more
The shocked, stunned, horrified, dazed GR reviews,
in praise of this sassafrass, prove that lemmings get
violent indigestion from a helping of pickled herring.
The condiment in question comes with Sylvia the metaphorical
mammal who represents any "love" that Society might condemn.
I'm mixing my metaphors because what else can you do?
Albee, grunting around a horny barnyard, is not being
literal when his married Dad explains that he's acuddle,
or what have you, with a goat. The puritan mind is always
in...more
in praise of this sassafrass, prove that lemmings get
violent indigestion from a helping of pickled herring.
The condiment in question comes with Sylvia the metaphorical
mammal who represents any "love" that Society might condemn.
I'm mixing my metaphors because what else can you do?
Albee, grunting around a horny barnyard, is not being
literal when his married Dad explains that he's acuddle,
or what have you, with a goat. The puritan mind is always
in...more
This work played a fundamental role my choice to leave graduate school while I was studying theatrical design. Perhaps my hatred of it is irrational and related to the surrounding events. However, I never liked it. I tolerated it as a project and as time wore on, and it garnered praise from others as being some grand writing denouement and well of deep insight.... I became more and more disgusted with the educational system and the self-praising nonsensical people within its echo chamber. So, ye...more
Edward Albee is a wickedly clever and emotionally wrought writer (no other playwright brings to mind such a strong connection to Nietzsche's conception of the theater as bringing the viewer to the inebriated and dark and raw Dionysian aspect of existence.) But over and above this, he performs one of the most essential tasks of the artist: to legitimately question cultural values. Just as, so I've heard, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf caused such a stir in the sixties, Albee didn't become content...more
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 t...more
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 t...more
Just finished this play yesterday, and probably need to consider it awhile before coming up with my definitive thoughts. My immediate response is that of deep gratitude to Albee for his compassionate consideration of the erotic magnetisms that can direct our lives so irresistibly, so irrevocably.
It's the story of an architect at the top of his career who deeply loves his wife and his 17-year old gay son, but who has fallen in love with Sylvia--a goat. The situation draws from classical tragedy,...more
It's the story of an architect at the top of his career who deeply loves his wife and his 17-year old gay son, but who has fallen in love with Sylvia--a goat. The situation draws from classical tragedy,...more
2006-2007 I was extremely into reading plays. I read a lot of Ibsen (Enemy of the People) and Shaw (Major Barbara)...very original of me, I know. In that period I happened upon this immortal gem: "The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?" In "the Goat," Albee explores sexuality unlike anything else I'd read or encountered personally up to that point. Short and sweet, this comes with an official Rich Rimkunas "strongly recommended" stamp of approval.
Stevie
"We're both too bright for most of the shit. We see the deep and awful humour of things go over the heads of most people; we see what's hideously wrong in what most people accept as normal; we have both the joys and the sorrows of all that. We have a straight line through life, right all the way to dying, but that's OK because it's a good line ... so long as we don't screw up."
... "And you've screwed up!" (88)
"We're both too bright for most of the shit. We see the deep and awful humour of things go over the heads of most people; we see what's hideously wrong in what most people accept as normal; we have both the joys and the sorrows of all that. We have a straight line through life, right all the way to dying, but that's OK because it's a good line ... so long as we don't screw up."
... "And you've screwed up!" (88)
Hilarious dialogue and slapstick humor with a completely random and pointless plot. The plot was so offensively (in the sense of poorly) handled that in spite of the brilliant writing and a very important and interesting message (things sometimes snap into sexual when we think they shouldn't) that I cannot give this more than one star. That's how much I hated the way the plot moved and the ridiculous ending.
Um...it was written well, and original, and Albee managed to put some humor into the whole nasty situation, but overall I just really didn't care for it. What made it creepy was that Sally Field played one of the characters on Broadway, so I pictured her doing all of this and it weirded me out because she's so wholesome. I don't know. The subject matter just wasn't my cup of tea. Glad I read it, but I wouldn't read it again. Maybe I would've liked it better had I seen it on stage. Plays are mean...more
Mar 09, 2008
Barbara Fang
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Shelves:
favorites,
notable-but-not-exactly-favorite
So I'm in this club at the University of Pittsburgh called Pizza and Plays. The premise of the club is to get free pizza and free plays. It's great. Every week, we meet, eat pizza and talk about the play we just read that week. Suffice it to say we read a fair number of plays. Of all the plays we've read so far this year, I think my favorite play must be this one. God, this was a hilarious yet heart-wrenching play. The characters were weaved so intricately and beautifully. They complemented each...more
A memorable and powerful play, about (as far as I can tell) the complications of love and human feeling, and the delicacy and arbitrariness of the way that society systematizes such feelings. I read it because I am currently in it, playing the role of Billy.
This is really not about beastiality but about what happens after a successful married family man reveals on his fiftieth bday to his wife, son and best friend that he's had an emotional (and physical) affair with a goat.
Its hard to explain but I must say I really liked this one - I think I get the overall point of it and the dialogue is real sharp and funny.
Its hard to explain but I must say I really liked this one - I think I get the overall point of it and the dialogue is real sharp and funny.
super duper... I got to preform a scene from this play while i was in college for a theatre course. It was so much fun. Always been a big fan of obscure humor and it doesn't get much more ridiculous than this.
I've read several Albee plays thus far, and I think this one is far and away the best of those plays. Although Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is Albee's most famous play, I prefer this play. What I liked most about this play is the set of absurdist overtones. I mean, the entire premise is a bit absurd--a man and a goat fall in love at first sight--but then there are the issues of incomplete and missed communication, the different levels of ethical discourse, and so on. For instance, Martin spen...more
The best part of THe Goat, or Who is Sylvia? Is that I had to act out a scene from this play in my Contemporary Dream Literature class... I played the goat loving man .... needless to say I was known as the "goat fucker" for the rest of the semester. .... Just my luck that I was assigned this play haha. I must say though, it is quite interesting
The family in this play sadly reminded me a lot of some of the families where I work. While an silly aqrgument about the goat, I think it is a nice example of how very political families function.
I struggled over three or four stars. It certainly is a page-turner, and it's very intriguing, but it really just one button that he kept pressing over and over.
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Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright known for works including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Zoo Story, The Sandbox and The American Dream. His works are considered well-crafted and often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights su...more
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“Stevie: Sorry. Destroy me.”
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“Stevie: (Not listening) That you can do these two things... and not understand how it... SHATTERS THE GLASS!!?? How it cannot be dealt with-how stop and forgiveness have nothing to do with it? and how I am destroyed? How you are? How I cannot admit it though I know it!? How I cannot deny it because I cannot admit it!? Cannot admit it, because it is outside of denying!?”
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Feb 01, 2009 09:58pm
Feb 03, 2009 11:44am