Martin (Will Giammona) and Stevie (Erin Mei-Ling Stuart) have the kind of indulgent marriage where one spouse’s increasing forgetfulness is fodder for gentle teasing and a shared laugh. With Martin newly minted as the youngest winner ever of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the couple truly seem like they have it all.
But that forgetfulness is worse than Martin initially lets on in Edward Albee’s “The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?” He can barely follow a conversation thread. His friend Ross (Kevin Singer) zeroes in on the problem: Martin’s in love. But as the play title suggests, he isn’t having an affair with the usual younger woman. The object of his love and lust is a ruminant.
In the 2000 play, now in a Shotgun Players production directed by Kevin Clarke, Martin is puzzled by himself.
“We’ve always been good together — good in bed, good out; always honest, always… considerate,” he says of himself and Stevie.
In a way, the Tony Award-winning script is a mystery story with two simple questions: Why does Martin feel this way, and how is such a taboo possible in his ultra-bourgeois world?