Edward Albee's new play is the tale of a famous New York architect who is, so to speak, 'laid low' after falling in love with a goat. Not only are we meant to laugh along with this idea, we are also meant to take it seriously. And herein lies the problem.
Woody Allen got here first with the story of Daisy, the sheep in his film Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask, but he at least kept it comic. So although Albee has hilarious lines such as 'Take your goat f***king hands off me', the idea of savvy New Yorkers being derailed by an out-of-town goat takes theatre of the absurd too far in the wrong direction.
Anthony Page's production is necessarily stumped by this flaw in a play that wouldn't get produced if it was not written by a Pulitzer Prize-winner. Hildegard Bechtler comes up with a sleek loft design that by the end of the play lies in rubble like the lives of the couple.
Jonathan Pryce plays the goat charmer with frazzled passion and game humour, while Kate Fahy plays his straight wife with patience and incredulity. Like their snivelling teenage gay son, played by Eddie Redmayne, they are reduced to the state of howling animals as their lifestyle illusions steadily fall apart. But no amount of actorly emotion can carry off the play's laughable central premise.
The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia?
