Scene One
A husband and wife—Martin and Stevie—are in the living room of their home preparing for the imminent arrival of Ross, Martin’s best bud. Martin is a very successful architect who just became—at age 50—the young recipient of a very prestigious architectural design award. Martin has also been tapped to design a 200-billion-dollar city of the future called World City. Ross is also the host of a television city called “People Who Matter” and as a result of the whirlwind rise to the top of his career, Martin has become just that. As a result, Ross is going to interview his friend for the show.
Before the arrival of Ross, Stevie and Martin playfully banter back and forth like any married couple, but with the distinctive weirdness of the wife—having sniffed an odd odor on her husband—joking about his having an affair with a goat.
The arrival of Ross coincides with Stevie’s exit, leaving the two men to conduct the interview. Martin’s mind, however, seems to be decidedly somewhere other than the topic of the interview. And since the topic of the interview is Martin himself, Ross put a stop to it to ask what’s bothering his friend. Off the record. Finally, Martin confesses to what is distracting him: he has been indulging in an affair. After some more prodding by Ross, the full truth comes out when Martin shows his friend a photograph of his forbidden love. Turns out it is really forbidden: Sylvia, the object of his affections, is a goat.
Scene Two
It is the same living room, but a day later. Martin and Stevie are now joined by their teenage son, Billy. Steve is in possession of a letter written by Ross; a letter which details Martin’s indiscretions in their entirety. Billy’s outraged objection to his father’s lust for a goat is met by a reminder that Billy’s own sexuality is not exactly welcomed by the world outside. Billy is a homosexual. Both parents demand that Billy leave the room and he does so in a state of profound emotional pain.
Martin proceeds to explain to Steve how his relationship with Sylvia commenced at a roadside vegetable stand and quickly moved from an “epiphany” stimulated by a meeting of their eyes to a love of such ecstasy and purity it cannot even be imagined unless experienced. Stevie counters this expression of love with a goat as the height of pure love with a rising anger that manifested in the physical form of destroying just about every object d’art in the exquisitely decorated room. Martin proceeds to plead his case by demanding that Stevie understand he loves both her and Sylvia to equal degrees. Stevie counters by insisting that Martin cannot that he has completely destroyed their lives. She storms out of the house in almost uncontrollable anger.
Scene Three
Three hours later, Billy returns to a demolition site. Nothing of any value remains intact inside the living room of his home. He questions his father as to the location of his mother. Martin replies that the only the thing he knows for sure is that she has vowed to destroy him. Martin moves to embrace Billy in a show of paternal affection and protection, but the gesture rapidly takes on a completely different tone when father and son soon find themselves in the midst of a passion kiss which is only broken by the arrival of Ross.
Ross immediately sets upon Martin with an almost Biblical intensity of charges of perversion against nature and all things normal in the world. Martin’s only defense is to remind Ross that love and sex are not always so clearly defined and desire can very often find a way to disturb the expected course of relationships. He then takes the opportunity to remind Ross of the ethical vacuum existing in writing a letter to another man’s wife discussing private admissions spoken within the expectation of privacy and confidence.
Stevie then finally returns. She is not alone, however. She has brought with her Sylvia. Or, to be precise, the lifeless corpse of what was once a thriving member of the animal kingdom. Sylvia is now nothing more than a bloody carcass. Martin is, of course, absolutely shattered and ravaged by this turn of events, but rather than setting upon the women he loves who murdered the goat he loves, he instead breaks down in a painful plea for forgiveness from his family. The play draws to an end with an equally devastated Billy looking from one parent to the other, overcome and overwhelmed by inexplicable events, asking and pleading for the world to return to normal with just two words: “Dad? Mom?”
