The Goat or Who is Sylvia?
The Goat or Who is Sylvia?
By Edward Albee
Directed by Karla Hartley
March 23 – April 9, 2006
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Tickets: $16.50 – $21.50
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Distinctions
Creative Loafing Best of the Bay
- Top 10 Plays of the Decade
- Top 10 Shows of 2006
- Best Play
- Best Actor – Steven Clark Pachosa
What It's About
Jobsite continues their 2005 – 2006 Season with Edward Albee’s controversial The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, which swept all the major theatrical awards for best new play in the New York 2001 – 2002 season and was also nominated for the Pulitzer that same year (which Topdog/Underdog won).
If everything is going right, then one can be sure that soon, everything will go wrong. Such is the case in the household of Martin Gray – a fabulously successful and prize-winning architect, his adoring wife Stevie and their gay son Billy. When Martin reveals a forbidden love that threatens his marriage, career and life, all bets are off as comedy and tragedy intertwine in the most humane and surprising work from one of our greatest living playwrights.
From Jay Reiner at Hollywood Reporter: “Albee has turned his attention to what looks like a conventional marriage, only to discover all sorts of unconventional feelings and ideas percolating beneath the surface. The difference is that in this play, Albee is asking better questions, albeit packaged in the same astringent language that can make us laugh, wince and think at the same time.”
Among the questions raised are: What is love and how does it differ, not only from sex, but from ordinary satisfactions? What do we owe the people we love besides loving them? What do we do when a part of our nature, lying beyond our control, urges us to overthrow our settled habits and ideas? And perhaps the most troubling question: How much pain do we have the right to cause someone who loves us, no matter how pure the motive (or how pure we think it is)?
The Goat has divided theatergoers and critics alike, but it no doubt got them talking, something a new Broadway play hasn’t done in a long, long time.
Possibly (the) most provocative play from the chronically provocative Edward Albee. - Variety
..as startling as it is satisfying. In fact, it is one of the most satisfying productions of the Broadway season. – Associated Press
Unquestionably one of the wittiest and funniest plays Albee has ever written. - New York Post
Critic Reviews
Compelling, crazy, sometimes brilliant.... The combination of an outrageous premise and its authentic, heart-rending aftermath creates a strange, often exhilarating tension between laughter and pathos. – Tampa Tribune
...a superb production... the most provocative American play of the last quarter century. See this fine play and you'll not only be entertained, you'll be challenged to remember – and examine – your deepest beliefs. – Weekly Planet
Cast & Crew
- Karla Hartley – Director & Production Designer
Cast
- Eric Burgess – Billy
- Monica Merryman – Stevie
- Steven Clark Pachosa – Martin
- Ward Smith – Ross
Patron Reviews
Maybe Jobsite’s best production. An intense emotional vehicle for the actors that grabs you and doesn’t let go until the end. Intelligent, witty and well-crafted. The play is TIGHT, with virtually every line and word necessary and meaningful. – anonymous
You should check out Jobsite Theater Company’s production of Edward Albee’s The Goat or Who is Sylvia? currently running at the Shimberg Playhouse in the Tampa Bay performing arts center. This is a powerful, powerful, powerful production with some amazing, brutally honest performances, not your typically schlock you find on the tube. – Jason Peck
