Goats - Royal Court (Downstairs)

So cute..... maybe they can munch in Sloane Square at lunch time.

I might partake if their Bar and Kitchen dishes up some goat curry, but I’d steer clear of anything with suspiciously large raisins.

I don’t like seeing animals on stage. I am not an animal activist but it seems so cruel to me. I could not stand it when the goose was brought on stage in Ferryman - and you just reminded me that I had wanted to file a complaint about it because as far as I could tell the goose seemed to be in distress. Animals don’t choose to perform on stage night after night.

The Goats are gorgeous, simply the sweetest creatures. The play is more educational than entertaining (in the preview stage), with Syria depicted as having a massive case of Big Brother, whereby you must hip hurray the death of your children, or else!

Some spoilers follow. . .

The production runs at 2 hours, 50 minutes, and needs to be cut before critics see it, as it's repetitive nature drove sizeable chunks of a dispirited audience to make for the exits at the interval.

Butterworth and McDonagh et al can sustain long running times dramatically, at this venue, because their plays have been peopled with multiple distinctive characters playing off each other in multiple distinctive ways, but here, despite the fact there are 12 people in the cast, there are really only three characters: the propagandist, the propagandised and the rebel (although too late in the production, nuances are introduced). Too much of the running time is just the propangandised and propagandist parroting propaganda, and the point is made humorously and effectively in about ten minutes, after which, it's yeah yeah, we get it! It is only when the play focuses on the rebel character, Carlos Chahine's Abu Firas, who refuses to glorify the death of his son, that the play becomes gripping. The charming director, Hamish Pirie might consider laser focusing the play on Chahine and cutting some of the fat. . .

Still, those goats. So cute. For the first time ever I understood why Albee called his play "The Goat," and not some other random animal, as these affectionate furry creatures loved the actors, were docile yet curious, evincing tiny outbursts of misbehaviour which made them resemble playful toddlers!

They seemed to understand the play as well, their actions mirroring the play's action:

(1) Where one man refused to buckle to fake news, one goat refused to leave the stage;
(2) Where one man slapped a woman in the face, one big goat headbutted a little goat (trying to steal his hay);
(3) Where the majority of characters are led like sheep by propagandists, the majority of goats are led like sheep by actors;
(4) Where human compliance merited the reward of a goat, goat compliance merited the reward of rice, hay and lettuce;
(5) Where one man could no longer stomach fake news, one goat could no longer stomach fake food (ie lettuce, which the goat deliberately ignored, gamboling freely off to fully explore the stage instead, to the great amusement of the audience).

As with other Big Brother themed plays, tv screens play fake news from start to finish.

Overall, I was impressed by Carlos Chahine's outraged grieving father, by the specifically distinctive portrait of Syrian mind control (in which "martyrdom" is lionised), and by the awesomeness of goats, in general. But this production could really take sheers to the endlessly repetitive verbiage, though not to the goats, who were the least shaggy part of the evening.

3 stars

Has anyone ever tried cheese made from either dog's or deer's milk?

Has Gillian Lynne choreographed the Goats?

I love the director Hamish Pirie on the Court website for this --- wow, the man is INTENSE .....

Or a local butcher has made a good offer and the fashionable folk of Kensington and Chelsea have elected to dine on unhung goat this Christmas.