Chris Bennion
The exhilarating confusion of The Goat.
Related Content
More About
I NEVER THOUGHT it would take goat- fucking to open my eyes to whats so frequently missing from local stages. Ive been griping about Seattle theaters sometimes alienating, often overweening pride for as long as Ive covered the scene, but it wasnt until this summer, watching Edward Albees bestiality-driven The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? affect the faces of ACTs full house, that I could put my finger on exactly what we need for the fall seasona genuine experience. As much as the live arts would like to posit themselves far above television or moviemaking, Seattle theater has increasingly tried to program audience reactions with infuriating condescension and presupposition: We have made something important, and you will now have the appropriate response to it.
The War on Terrorism hasnt helped matters. Though Seattle companies have finally taken up the call to duty by producing worksboth classic and contemporarythat question our own complicity in the terrible things that happen to us, we get a lot of telling rather than showing in the classroom of the theater. Sharon Ott staged a jejune, Shakespeare-lite Romeo and Juliet at the Rep this spring that raised its curtain on two modern-day guerrilla warriors (topical, get it?) while forgetting that the timeless love story at its core would be far more successful in rendering the ravages of petty social forces than any modern comment could be.
Even productions that are just supposed to be irreverent larks come down on you like eagle-eyed hawks. Take last months Point Break, the latest in a long line of Seattle fringe pieces that seem to think they can get by on attitude alone. It had a ripe comic idea: Take Kathryn Bigelows 1991 escapist flickin which Zen surfer Patrick Swayze shows FBI agent Keanu Reeves the thrill of robbing banksand stage it as a movie-in-progress, each night featuring a completely unprepared audience member standing in for Reeves. Trouble was, everyone else onstage looked unprepared, too, and seemed to be daring the rest of us to call them on it. The friends of the Keanu stand-in were howling their knowing asses off the evening I attended, while the surrounding people were laughing in that forced, uncertain way that suggests they didnt want to be seen as traveling without a hip passport. The tone of the evening, from its almost 20-minute-late start to its ill-conceived end, was simply this: Youve got no right not to find this funny because, hey, we think its bullshit, too! Well, thanks, kids. The show came with an audience- participation bagphony money to give the bank robbers, a used disposable raincoat to survive the water guns, etc.but little else of tangible fun.
Ive seen plenty of exceptions to this kind of proud incompetence and audience bullyingIntimans The Light in the Piazza inspired utter devotionbut it was The Goat that brought such considerations to a head.
At first, ACT used the better part of its promotion waving the flag of prestige (the play was an Albee Tony-winner, and everyone was talking about it). Then the theater apparently got cold feet, sending out a subscriber missive warning theatergoers of the unsettling nature of the play and letting them know they were welcome to exchange tickets and come back another time for something less scary.
But audience response to director Warner Shooks graceful production put all those preconceptions to shame, and served as a good example of what we have a right to expect from theater. A big commercial success, the show let people respond on their ownit dared you. Albees play asks us to consider one mans bestiality as just another example of the things we think about but dare not say. The show chewed on that in a very intimate theater-in-the-round setting. One couple walked out the night I wentyoung people, not elderly curmudgeons. Who knows why they left? Still others who at first seemed upset later looked profoundly moved. The older attendees (and there were many) sat there rather placidly, some with looks of mild amusementmaybe because by the time you hit age 65, youve seen some things in your life that might make even Edward Albee pause and are happy for the chance to ponder these unponderables.
If this seasons offerings want to reach the little people, theyll need to let us recognize the expansiveness of our own minds.
Steve Wieckings Fall Favorites
Girl Power Returns
The summer was a good one for young female empowerment, with both Whale Rider and Bend It Like Beckham. The Seattle Childrens Theatre has seized on the zeitgeist, opening its season with the world premiere adaptation of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, a Newberry honor book by childrens author Avi. Set in the 1830s, Charlottes Confessions see a young British lady surviving a mutiny at sea, bonding with the crew, sailing like a pro, and even battling a murder charge. Nobody does childrens theater better than SCT the company knows how to present a message in an invigorating way. Forget Hollywood: This is what youll want to take your kids to this season. Seattle Childrens Theatre, 206-441-3322. Opens Sept. 12.
