EDWARD Albee has said his new play, “The Goat,” is about “a goat who falls in love with a man.”
That is true, but no one should think “The Goat” is about bestiality. If it were, it would not, I assure you, be headed to Broadway, where it is scheduled to open in the spring.
Theater people who attended a reading last week say this is a major new work from our most important living playwright, right up there with “A Delicate Balance,” “Three Tall Women” and “Seascape” (a fine play begging for a revival).
The main character is a successful architect named Martin. His wife, Stevie, is a classic Albee woman – steely, acerbic, smart. His best friend is a gay man with whom he once had a brief sexual relationship.
Martin and Stevie’s son is also gay, and in a scene that is bound to make audiences squirm, the son attempts to seduce the father.
Martin’s relationship with the goat will make them squirm, too. But the goat is not meant to be taken literally. It is, of course, a symbol – for the power of hidden desire, obsessive love and repressed sexuality.
The love that dare not bleat its name ends horrifically, and, in fact, people who attended the reading say “The Goat” is written in the style of a Greek tragedy.
Campbell Scott played Martin in the reading and is said to be Albee’s choice for Broadway.
Mercedes Ruehl played the wife, Dennis O’Hara was the neighbor and Jeffrey Carlson played the son.
Ruehl, I’m told, was superb. She played Martha in Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” earlier this year in Minneapolis, and will probably be in “The Goat” on Broadway.
“The Goat” is going to be a tough sell, to be sure. There is probably no limit to the number of people who do not want to see a play “about a goat who falls in love with a man.”
But my sense is that “The Goat” is going to be an important cultural event in the spring, and anybody who cares about American dramatic literature will not want to miss it.
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Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh are producing partners again.
Well, in a small way, in a small venture that recently lost a (for them) small amount of money.
The two giants of the musical theater – who haven’t worked together since “The Phantom of the Opera” in 1988 – were stealth backers of “Mr. President,” the old Irving Berlin musical that was revived last month by Gerard Alessandrini, whose long-running “Forbidden Broadway” skewers many of Lloyd Webber’s and Mackintosh’s shows.
Their investment wasn’t a secret, but nobody volunteered the information until The Post asked.
Says Mackintosh: “Andrew and I . . . have enjoyed being on the receiving end of Gerard’s wickedly funny barbs over the years. When he decided to do ‘Mr. Presi- dent,’ we were happy to give him a bit of money to do it.”
Neither Mackintosh nor Lloyd Webber saw “Mr. President.”
The critics panned it, and it closed after only a week.
But Alessandrini says the set is still in place and the show can easily be revved up “for a command performance, if they happen to be in town.”