Shotgun Players’ 34th season opens with a baa-ng this month, with the Tony Award-winning tragedy, “The Goat or, Who is Sylvia,” written by Edward Albee in 2000 and directed by Shotgun core company member Kevin Clarke. The provocative masterpiece, also a 2003 Pulitzer finalist, challenges its audience with unsettling scenarios about intimacy, morality and the boundaries of what’s permissible in modern society.
Shotgun Players’ “The Goat or, Who is Sylvia” Mar. 21-April 19. Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets online or at (510) 841-6500 ext. 303. Discounts available.
Protagonist Martin Gray leads a seemingly normal, good life, as a successful architect with a loving wife and a teenage son. But he has a pretty big secret: He’s in love with a goat named Sylvia. What follows the staggering revelation is a devastating confrontation as the veneer of domestic perfection comes crashing down.
“This play tests the limits of permissiveness,” says director Kevin Clarke. “It doesn’t moralize on what’s good or bad — you have to take the characters at face value and believe them when they tell you they’re in love.” Nor does the show shirk from asking or answering tough questions. Martin’s confession is a deeply personal inquiry, driven by Albee’s clever dialogue and disarming comedic timing, into an unyielding ethical interrogation.
Martin’s revelation forces him to experience his affair through the eyes of his jolted family. A wife must contend with her adulterous husband. A son deals with the realization that parents can be flawed, while also navigating his recent coming-out as gay. A longtime friend struggles with realizing how little he knew. Through Albee’s visceral writing, taboos arise and offer an examination of sexuality and human connection.
William Giammona plays Martin, a role inaugurated by Bill Pullman during the play’s 2002 Broadway debut. Erin Mei-Ling Stuart returns to the Ashby Stage with a heartfelt portrayal of Martin’s wife, Stevie Gray. The role was previously played by Mercedes Ruehl, earning her a 2002 Tony Award nomination for Best Actress. Stuart last appeared with Shotgun Players in the 2025 world-premiere of Christopher Chen’s “The Motion.”
Kevin Singer plays family friend Ross. He was nominated for a San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for his performance as George in Shotgun Players’ 2025 “Sunday in the Park with George.” And Joel Ochoa rounds out the cast playing the Gray’s son, Billy.
Behind the scenes, designer Liliana Duque Piñeiro has set Albee’s most daring work and unforgettable scenes with a set design as bold as the play’s themes.
The playwright, Albee, wrote in a 2005 collection of essays, “You may, of course, have received the misleading information that the play is about bestiality — more con than pro. Well, bestiality is discussed during the play (as is flower arranging) but it is a generative matter rather than the ‘subject.’ The play is about love, and loss, the limits of our tolerance and who, indeed, we really are.”
Previews start March 21 and the play opens March 28. Tickets are on sale now, and some dates have already sold out.
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