State Theatre Company South Australia. Dunstan Playhouse. 14 Feb 2023
The Goat brings an opening night to go down in the Adelaide history books.
It was a beautiful warm evening and even though having applauded through countless curtain calls, the audience was not flocking out into it.
Instead, the audience filled the foyer in a deafening crush of wild animation. It had just experienced a benchmark production of one of the world’s most outrageously provocative and devilishly witty plays. It was on a high.
Edward Albee’s The Goat or Who is Sylvia? may well be modern STC’s piece-de-resistance production. Throwing a thesaurus of superlatives at it would not be going too far. Nor would popping director Mitchell Butel onto a plinth.
Of course, there are three major stars involved in this triumph.
Claudia Karvan may shed any fleeting doubt she had about returning to the live theatre. Hers is a breathtaking performance. She portrays Stevie, the hapless good wife dealing not only with the exposure of her husband’s infidelity but the mindboggling fact that “the other woman” is a goat called Sylvia. Karvan produces an impressive palette of emotions, her reactive versatility extending to extremely compelling facial twitching. That’s a totality of physicality from an actor. But, her role also calls for clowning as her character thrashes through incredulity, fury, and heartbreak; Karvan can do that, too. And, with that strong, sharp voice, she etches every word into the auditorium with clarity.
Nathan Page parries, his voice husky with emotion as he delivers confessional torrents in the role of Martin, a husband as adamant about his stance as he is defensive.
It’s a war of incredulity, the passions periodically punctuated by grammatical corrections, stop, shock, and laugh moments in a torrid script. The playwright has drawn these characters as highly educated people with almost OCD pedantic streaks. It is delicious.
The director, meanwhile, has artfully used stillness in Page to heighten crumbling Martin’s emotional interplay, albeit that he is an actor of exceptional physical grace. Mark Saturno brings the bombastic element to the domestic hearth as Martin's TV interviewer-cum-best-friend, Ross. His is the voice of the outside world, while Yazeed Daher, as the gay teenage son, Billy, speaks for the cause of acceptable sexual diversity. Bestiality is not in its scope, and yet, while it appals, it is a thing.
In braving this issue, Albee has created a play which has continued to shock and fascinate audiences since 2002, provoking furious foyer discussions. The play has just kept on reaping awards in all directions. Some people are offended but most have recognised that this is a great classic tragedy, almost perfectly wrought, its dramatic roots reaching back to Greek mythology. And yet it is so funny, bitterly, shamefully, guffaw funny.
State’s expert production values sing their own beautiful song in this presentation. The sophisticated urbanity of Jeremy Allen’s slick New York set, with its with Frank Lloyd Wright-esque modernist chic, reflects the success and erudition of its occupants. Ailsa Paterson’s costumes, similarly, make the right notes with Karvan at first in a stunning pleated skirt which emphasises her femininity and social confidence and then in high-waisted striped lounging trousers which are just-so for the needs of a tortured clown. Again, right on the mark. As is Nigel Levings’ lighting plot, throwing day and night, ease and crisis into artful relief.
If the production continues with this excellence and momentum through its season, it is creating a laugh-and-cry entity which seriously needs to be experienced. From this critic, the message is: Do Not Miss It.
Samela Harris
When: 14 to 25 Feb
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: statetheatrecompany.com.au
