Go! review

In spite of it’s brilliance, Edward Albee’s “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?” is not a play that’s going to appeal to everyone.

First off, it’s a play about a man who falls in love with a goat and seems, on the surface at least, to honor his choice of companion. So those who are squeamish about sexual issues in general, or issues of bestiality in particular, are likely to be put off from the outset.

But in confronting Martin Gray’s love for Sylvia the goat leads us into an interesting, if unsettling, exploration of human passion.

Plus, the level of language in the dialog is Albee, a man who owns three Pulitzer Prizes, at his finest: Witty, disconcerting, sometimes hilarious and horrifying in the same mom ent.

“The Goat” begins with a vague unease as Martin, an award-winning architect about to celebrate his 50th birthday, enters the room looking for something, feeling out of sorts, distracted. His wife Stevie notices a peculiar smell about him and jokingly asks him if he’s having an affair. They put on a kind of faux-repartee in which he dramatically declares that he is having an affair with a goat, to which Stevie laughs and makes a joke about going off to the feed store.

Later, when he confesses to his best friend that he is, indeed, having an affair with a goat, we can’t help but laugh again.

The first half of the 90-minute intermissionless piece plays like that: A parlor comedy.

But the deeper the characters go to unravel Martin’s, um, affliction of affection, the darker and the less funny it becomes. In the end, we must question all of our ideas and attitudes about love and sex, and that is more to the point than a defense of bestiality.

Brian Isaac Phillips turns in one of his finest performances as Martin. Even though he is at least 15 years younger than the character he portrays, it doesn’t matter. He plays the right notes and helps us understand the conflict and the commitment that Martin has for his affection.

Likewise, Amy Warner as Stevie and Chris Conner as their gay son, Billy, portray a realistic horror as they try to understand how a man who loves them could also have a sexual and romantic attachment to an animal.

New Stage Collective deserves kudos for having the courage to stage such a controversial and important work (although Albee didn’t get the Pulitzer for this, it did receive the Tony Award for best new play in 2000) to open its new home on Main Street.