Bringing cutting-edge and award-winning theater to Ketchum is not difficult when nexStage Theatre is involved. Nexstage is breaking barriers to expand the focus of the performing arts in the valley, and this summer it will continue its 2010 season with a performance of Edward Albee's Tony Award-winning play "The Goat or Who is Sylvia?"
"The show attracted us when Keith and I saw it in New York City," said Patsy Wygle, who plays the role of Stevie. "The audience was buzzing and it was so exciting."
The entire cast—Keith Moore who plays Martin, Harry Dreyfuss who plays Billy and Jamey Reynolds who plays Ross—all agree that the play makes everyone laugh, but it's got big messages that require brain power.
"What I love about the work is that it's not something that often occurs, and it really tests the mettle of knowing someone for 40 years," said Reynolds about his character and his relationship with Martin.
The play is set in an upscale New York City apartment. Martin, a very reputable architect, has turned 50 and has won the prestigious "Pritzker Prize" for architecture. He and his wife, Stevie, have a wonderful marriage and a warm and understanding relationship with their gay son, Billy.
But not all is right, and Martin reveals a shocking secret to his friend Ross that he's been hiding from Stevie, which is the play's central conflict and forces thinking beyond one's comfort zone and entree into a liberal mind.
Director K.O. Ogilvie said she loves the play, the first of two Albee plays that she will direct this year. "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" will be staged this fall.
"It's Albeepolooza," Ogilvie said. "The challenge for me is to treat an unnatural occurrence as not out of the ordinary in order for the play to work."
Ogilvie said the play must be believable right away to hold an audience's interest.
"The Greek connection of the goat makes it a tragedy, which enlightens and provokes," Reynolds said. "The play has many layers."
The name of the play refers to the song "Who is Sylvia?" from Shakespeare's play "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." Albee is a modern playwright steeped in theatre of the absurd, but for Americans. "The Goat or Who is Sylvia?" was written in 2002 and is the latest in Albee's expansive and award-winning body of work.
"Any art form, especially visual performances, solicits a response, good or bad," Ogilvie said. "If it gets you talking, we have done our job and even if you hate it, it makes us work harder."
Clive Barnes of the New York Post called it "one of the wittiest and funniest plays Albee has ever written."
"Imagine the unimaginable," Albee said in an interview with Charlie Rose. "Imagine that all of a sudden you found yourself in love with a Martian, in love with something that you cannot conceive of."
"This play is so now and we need to talk about and think about it," cast member Dreyfuss said.
"The Goat" runs for six nights, Thursday, June 3, through Saturday, June 5, and Thursday, June 10, through Saturday, June 12, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 each, with a special preview night on Thursday, June 3, when the first 50 tickets will be sold for $10. For tickets, call 726-4857 or stop by the nexStage Theatre lobby box office from 2-4 p.m. weekdays.
"Break your own preconceived ideas of edgy theater and get some goat," cast member Moore said.
Sabina Dana Plasse: splasse@mtexpress.com
“The Goat or Who is Sylvia?” by Edward Albee features Harry Dreyfuss as Billy, left, and Keith Moore as Martin at the nexStage Theatre.
