This article contains a major spoiler about the staging of The Goat. You have been warned!
Before I watched the play, I had a feeling that I might come face-to-face with a goat carcass. I mean, the warnings were there, quite literally: among the list of triggers appended to this production (homophobia, bestiality, incest…), “halal animal corpse” particularly stood out to me. Suffice to say, Clarendon Productions’ The Goat is not one for vegans.
Edward Albee’s 2000 play (I hesitate to call it either a “tragedy” or a “comedy” – more on this in a second) is a classic boy-meets-goat story: the married Martin (played by Rob Wolfreys) is discovered to be having an affair with the so-called “Sylvia” by his best friend Ross (Luke Bannister), wife Stevie (Honor Thompson), and son Billy (Euan Elliot). But just ‘Who is Sylvia?’, asks the subtitle to Albee’s play. Why, she’s a goat, of course! Not kid-ding (sorry).
The action is effectively divided into three acts – the first, which builds up to Martin revealing his new “lover”, is not as compelling as the latter two (speaking of “lovers”, it’s difficult not to draw some thematic parallels to last week’s psychosexual drama…) The play really seems to take off once it begins to deal with the aftermath of Martin’s confession, as his family falls apart by the seams.
Staging a play with such a bizarre premise, a director is faced with a vital creative question: be serious or play for laughs? Vita Hamilton largely leans into the latter – and quite effectively. Moments of high tension are diffused by the sheer absurdity of the situation that the family finds themselves in. Martin begins to lament that he is “deeply troubled, greatly divided” – Stevie replies succinctly, “animal fucker!” It almost seemed to be like a really bizarre episode of The Office. Like a mockumentary, this play relies on awkwardness and absurdity in the “real world” to hit all of its comic beats, and this was heightened by Clarendon’s naturalistic approach to the play’s dialogue – characters often talk over one another, make false starts before they speak, and linger in uncomfortable silences.
But Wolfreys was the real driving force of this play’s comedy. He really plays up its essential awkwardness. As a well-read, middle-aged architect, his calm and intellectual demeanour stands in comic contrast to the sheer crudity of his goat-fucking – “I wish you were stupid!”, cries Stevie at one point. His pedantry is simply hilarious: it’s Sylvia, “whom he’s fucking”, not “who”, he corrects his dear friend Ross.
All this is not to say that The Goat doesn’t have its moments of tension. Thompson was a compelling counterpoint to Wolfreys. While her incredulous reactions to her blasé husband fits the play’s humour, she also reminds us of the tangible, tragic reality of her husband’s deed. The actors frequently sit in chairs dotted around the front rows of the audience, coincidentally right next to my own. As Thompson smashed crockery in fury, I remember feeling scared for my own life – her agitation and silent rage emanated from beside me. Choose your seats carefully!
Particularly impressive is the set design: a domestic space, complete with a dining set and mini-library, but shrouded by sheets as if in a tent. One might start to call this set “cozy”, but of course, when dealing with such subject matter, any feeling of comfort very quickly disintegrates. With the audience in such close proximity to the actors, the set also allows for maximum immersion. At such close quarters to the action, I felt hyper-aware of how other audience members were reacting to it. I looked around, and saw fellow play-goers expressing shared feelings of raw shock. Laughs rippled around the room, creating a communal (if a little weird) experience unique to student theatre. We were definitely all in this together.
One particular highlight came during the play’s third act. Right before all of our eyes, a broken son (Elliot), shaken by all that has happened, embraces his father. But what sounds, in theory, like a tender moment quickly devolves into something sinister. Jaws dropped, as Wolfreys and Elliot lingered in their hug for an awkward period of time, began to stroke each other’s backs, inched their faces towards each other, and – I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination. I think this moment perfectly encapsulates the emotions at the core of this production: shock, tension, and uncontrollable, awkward laughter.
Ultimately, I can’t deny that I enjoyed watching this bizarre production. It does rely a fair bit on shock to carry its action, but that doesn’t feel too out-of-place in a play like this (it’s about a man’s affair with a goat, for goodness’ sake!). Its irreverent style of humour will definitely appeal to those with a penchant for dark, cynical comedy.
If you’re looking for a play that does something very different, and honestly quite radical for a student production, ewe (sorry) should look no further than The Goat’s closing scene. Like I said at the start, we were promised a real, actual, live (well, not quite live) goat carcass, and Vita Hamilton has definitely delivered it – well, its bloody head, at least. As we left the theatre, audience members were free to approach the table and see it (sorry, “her”, as Martin would correct me) up-close. Out of all the quirky anecdotes that I will be able to tell about my time at Oxford, The Goat is definitely going to be a highlight…
[The Goat, a production by Clarendon Productions, is running at The Michael Pilch Studio, 12th-15th Feb]