Playwright: Edward Albee. At: Remy Bumppo Theatre at The Greenhouse, 2257 N. Lincoln. Tickets: 773-404-7336; http://www.remybumppo; $30-$45. Runs through: May 8
Martin and Stevie's idyllic marriage goes down the drain in minutes when their friend, Ross, reveals that Martin has betrayed his wife with a goat. Playwright Edward Albee's theme is not bestiality but what becomes of marriage, family and friendship when something happens "that's outside the rules, and we don't know how to behave," as Stevie says. Albee tests his premise with the most outrageous cheat he can imagination, something beyond everyday infidelity. Martin never apologizes for his ecstatic attraction to the goat he's named Sylvia, but repeatedly tells his wife, teenage son and Ross that they cannot understand a relationship as inexplicable as it was unexpected.
However, Albee is too wise a playwright to make things one-sided against Martin: he amplifies the situation by making Martin and Stevie a couple who have beenup to this pointobsessively in love and never-cheating in 22 years. It's Stevie's obsession with Martin that triggers her volcanic reaction to his affair, especially when he says that he loves both her and Sylvia. Putting Stevie and Sylvia on an equal footing (make your own two feet vs. four jokes) is not so much a negation of Stevie's womanhood as of her personhood, her humanity, and Stevie's reaction is primal.
The overall premise is comic, but Albee's tone grows increasingly earnest over 105-minute running time because he doesn't want it to be only a joke. The teenaged son, dealing with his own peccadilloes as well as adolescent angst, is crucial late in the play to the tonal shift and to retaining audience sympathy for Martin. The play is far more thesis-driven than character driven (there's remarkably little exposition about anyone), so the burden of making it work falls upon the director and actors.
Happily, in his last chore as Remy Bumppo artistic director, James Bohnen grabs the brass ring. Nick Sandys and Annabel Armourveterans and stalwarts of Remy Bumppoare ideal as Martin and Stevie, each allowed his/her literal primal scream as well as moments big and small, subtle and not, comic and solemn. Veteran Michael Joseph Mitchell is a lively foil as best-friend Ross, the play's least developed character. The fresh face is Will Allan as the gay son. We've seen him before, but this is a breakthrough appearance for him, and he makes Billy a wise, funny, confused, defensive and tender young man.
Remy Bumppo has moved to the downstairs theater at The Greenhouse for this production, which allows scenic designer Tim Morrison to create a more intimate and more realistic set than in the troupe's usual upstairs space. His warm-toned modern living room is suitably luxe, and filled with tasteful art and collectibles which prove to be as fragile as Martin and Stevie's marriage.