Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, The

It's as if producer Max Bialystock is back in business, trying to mount a comedy about a subject so gross, the play will have to close after one performance. Credit Edward Albee for choosing an inconceivable plot, writing about a man who has sex with a goat and making us care about him. Not only that; Albee has written perhaps the wittiest of all his plays. Bill Pullman and Mercedes Ruehl are an apparently-happy married couple with a relatively normal gay son. Pullman is a world-famous architect, on top of the world at age 50. Nothing seems amiss until Ruehl hears that her husband is having an affair with someone named Sylvia. Telltale bits of evidence about who is Sylvia are ignored until Pullman reveals that she is a goat. Almost any other playwright would eventually reveal that it's a misunderstanding, or an unfulfilled fantasy, but Pullman's character is actually obsessed with this goat and is having an ongoing sexual affair with it.

Is Albee telling us that we should keep an open mind towards any love, regardless of whether society approves of the partners? Perhaps. But he seems mainly to be asking us how we would cope with a bigger and more unexpected problem than we ever faced before. He also forces us to question the limits of our tolerance. It's timely, coming to the stage so soon after 9/11.

Pullman is appealing in a difficult role, while Ruehl is absolutely magnificent. She has to be incredulous, then horrified, then angry, and she does so in a natural, believable way. I won't give away the ending, but it's a gory one. This fascinating play isn't for sissies.