There’s always room for one hit play on
every subject. So the big
question, as
this Broadway season draws to a close, is whether
Edward Albee has cornered the market in bestiality. At the Golden
Theatre, it certainly smells like that, if you’ll forgive the
expression. Scholars may recall Rochelle Owens’ Futz (boy meets
pig) but Futz never had the feel of a big-time Main-Stem
bridge-&-tunnel tourist-party bus-&-truck dinner-theater hit that
in just a few weeks has descended on The Goat; Or, Who is
Sylvia?

I first saw the play when I was wiped out by jetlag, so I went
back to see it a second time and I was amazed at the assurance
that had settled on the Golden in the brief intervening period.
Part of this is due to the audience, which seems to have decided
that this is the new Neil Simon smash that Simon himself no
longer seems up to writing. But the rest is due to Albee, whose
cunning framing of his topic seems to be rewarded with each
successive performance.

You would think, would you not, that a play about bestiality
would most likely involve a farmboy and his pa’s prize Holstein.
I don’t give the subject a lot of thought but, when I do, I
assume that, as with the Catholic Church’s current difficulties,
assurance of supply and ease of access enter into the equation.
But Albee’s Goat is a yokel-free production. The curtain
rises—actually, it doesn’t rise; the set’s