Karvan Kills it in Albee’s The Goat

Presented by the Sydney Theatre Company and the State Theatre of South Australia, Edward Albee’s The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? now performing at the Roslyn Packer Theatre is one of the most confrontational texts to be performed on a mainstream stage.

At the same time, if Monday night’s audience is anything to go by, it is also one of the funniest.

Written in 2000, The Goat is set in the home of successful architect Martin Bray (Nathan Page), his adoring wife Stevie (Claudia Karvan) and their son Billy (Yazeed Daher) on the eve of Martin’s nomination for a major contract.

Then Martin’s best friend, Mark (Ross Tuttle) delivers Stevie a letter.

What could go wrong? Well everything, actually.

Albee’s play takes the premise of normality and turns it on its head, forcing us to confront social norms, the limits of tolerance and the vagaries of language, which are triggered when Stevie finds out via Mark that Martin is having an affair, with a goat, and not just any goat but one who is called Sylvia.

Cue betrayal, confrontation, angst and loss to which only teenage son, Billy seems to have any clarity of what is unfolding.

Director Mitchell Butel does an admirable job keeping the actors on pace with the rapid fire script that turns on a dime between pathos, bathos and domestic mundanity as the characters question their relationship and the elephant in the room that is bestiality.

This is brought to a head when Mark questions Billy’s homosexuality, while ignoring the issue of Sylvia and Martin’s revelation that he belongs to a bestial version of AA.

The uncredited fifth character in The Goat is Jeremy Allan’s set, a simple realistic imagining of the family’s status and tastes that becomes the canvas for Stevie’s fury and incomprehension.

For Sydneysider’s, Karvan is the major draw to this production, with the other cast members being regulars with the STCSA.

The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? is Karvan’s first stage performance in 25 years and we have to ask, why?

She brings to her character Stevie just the right balance of appeal, nurturing and outrage that culminates in her playing out an audacious act to protect any future they may have.

Like Karvan, Nathan Page has a long list of screen credits as well as roles for STC, STCA and MTC.

In the role of Martin, Page has the difficult task of navigating his character through the issue of his bestiality while allowing us to have some empathy, or at least not total distaste, for Martin, which he does admirably.

This production marks the stage debut for Yazeed Daher and his assured portrayal of Billy will make sure that it won’t be his last.

Ross Tuttle plays Mark with the right amount of righteousness that makes his character insufferable, but one that is also a sounding board for the perceived normality in society.

Accent coach Jennifer Innes deserves credit for devising American accents with just the right amount of inflection that all cast members maintain throughout.

The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? is tough and confronting as it deals with issues that are relevant today as social media and politicians distort our versions of reality to their own ends and we struggle to find our own moral compasses.

Until April 1

Roslyn Packer Theatre, 22 Hickson Road, The Wharf

www.sydneytheatre.com.au