If you know the play's big secret, that spares you watching the first half hour, so here it is: the lead character, a successful architect and family man, confesses to a friend he's in love with a goat. The next hour shows his wife and gay son screaming at and insulting him while he tries to explain why. The last twenty minutes features a father-son reconciliation of sorts, and a wife who exacts revenge.
There, I've saved you the trouble of seeing this juvenile nonsense, which, thanks to Edward Albee's reputation and fine work by Mercedes Ruehl and Bill Pullman, is being credited in some quarters as a shocking and hilarious exploration of forbidden love. Rubbish! Any episode of "South Park" has more shock and believable moral questioning than The Goat, while the Gene Wilder segment in Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex..." chewed over this same turf shorter, better, funnier thirty years ago.
