The Goat, or, Who is Sylvia? is Edward Albee's latest and quite possibly greatest play. It garnered a Tony in 2002, some 39 years after his first and only other Tony, for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
To describe the plot, themes and characters of this play, one would have to start with the indescribable, or, perhaps, the indescribably incomprehensible. Like HBO's Six Feet Under, neither the characters, nor the events that happen to them, nor the events that they make happen, are able to be definitively explained or fully understood.
Back in AP English class, Mrs. Anderson explained that Albee and his Existentialist playwright peers advocate honesty at all times, that murder is the ultimate act of wrongdoing, and that humanity is ridiculous, although something to be playful with.
This play hit a great many Existentialist tenets -- some basic and others more subtle. Although I would recommend getting an Existentialist fix every two years or so, Albee's instruction rendered me feeling far less innocent and far more gloomy upon leaving the theater than coming in.
That said, it was, as they say, "a hell of a show"
