‍Edward Albee’s Searing Tragedy Evokes Laughter, Tears, Revelation‍ ‍

by Bevon Benet Brye ‍

In “The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?” Edward Albee uses bestiality as a scorched-earth metaphor for the limitations of modern empathy. The playwright challenges us to extend our feelings beyond the liberal pieties about race, gay, and “others.” Here, everything is included.

Sylvia, The Goat, “them,” is less about the goat and more about the terrifying unknown in ourselves. Four great actors tear the mask from the visceral, messy reality we avoid in the streets of San Francisco.

Shotgun Players’ production will make your skin crawl in the best way. Brilliant director Kevin Clarke takes provocation to new heights, shoving our faces into the gritty life that his spoiled, privileged characters fear and detest.

Martin (urbane William Giammona), a world-class architect, has fallen deeply in love with a goat he encounters in the countryside—a goat with “a bag of nipples dragging in the dung.” Giammona makes us feel like we are trespassing on a man’s mental breakdown. It’s invasive, gross, and I could not look away!

Elegant Martin is “hopelessly” in love and trapped by his success. He cannot bear the splendid isolation of his wealth and fame. Nature calls out to him, luring him to an earthier world. His brain has become a sieve, as he comically loses track, while his life catches fire.

Liliana Duque Piñeiro’s elegant single-wall set and Sharon Peng’s loose white clothing suggest Greek tragedy. Their elite offense is arrogance in over-insulated lives.

As Stevie, his wife, the extraordinary Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, engages Martin in off-the-cuff, Noel Coward banter. She plays her role as sophisticated lady-wife with fervor. She goes from arranging flowers to screaming, “GET YOUR GOAT-FUCKING HAND OFF ME!!”

Stuart’s unfolding intensity feels like a horror film. In this symbolic show, there are no props, just sound to indicate her destructive acts.  As an elegant, spoiled lady, she cannot comprehend Martin’s utter degradation. Their privileged world shatters because it’s too perfect.

Joel Ochoa’s vivid performance as the 17-year-old, clever gay son Billy, provides the jolt for the family’s collapse. He’s “gay as the nineties,” but the gut-punch comes when Billy confronts his father. Their contact is physical and threatening, tearing another veil from their conformist life. Like Oedipus, they have been living a lie.

They are out of touch with their emotions. Standing in contrast is Kevin Singer’s diabolical Ross, the Judas friend who pens the snitch letter that destroys the family. Singer plays him as an ethical torturer, a puritanical prick we soon despise. Ross shows that we have lost the ability to feel anything about those who are “unlike” us.

When Martin stands “at the top of the hill,” staring into the “pure and trusting” eyes of a beast, his city life becomes a “pit so deep” he cannot climb out. He sees his own superficiality and falls into a comic despair.

Shotgun Players dares to take a powerful new tack on Albee’s “The Goat,” and open our eyes to fear. After the doubly shocking climax, we will never be the same. A masterpiece.

“The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?” by Edward Albee, directed by Kevin Clarke, lighting by Sophia Craven, costumes by Sharon Peng, set & props design by Liliana Duque Piñeiro, and sound by Matt Stines, at Shotgun Players, Berkeley, California.

Info: shotgunplayers.org – to April 26, 2026.

Cast: William Giammona, Joel Ochoa, Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, and Kevin Singer.