He’s seen ‘Sylvia’ and he’s stumped

Had I paid closer attention in a drama class that I took as an undergraduate at San Francisco State, I probably would have had a more refined knowledge of what Edward Albee intended in his play called “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?” I thought it was just about a guy shagging an animal. Wrong again.

It wasn’t until I was discussing it with friends that I heard about all the underlying possibilities, the subtext, if you will, that wound its way through the entire 105 minutes of the drama that closed recently at the Mark Taper and, hopefully, will never return.

My desire to be washed clean of any memory of the story of bestiality clearly manifests my inability to discern the true meaning of Albee’s effort. One friend, by way of explaining the affair between a male human and a female goat, pointed to the playwright’s success as reason enough to accept, without quibbling, anything he wrote.

“He is famous,” she said and went on to explain that there were some things meant to be understood only by a select few, usually people with money or degrees in subjects pertaining to the discussion. They are the cognoscenti who are blessed with the ability to see what the rest of us are too blind or dumb to perceive.

Leaving the theater on the night of the play, I overheard one couple agreeing that it was about loneliness, and another that it was intended as an effort to explain marital alienation in America. The word “metaphor” was mentioned a good deal, as was the term “cultural inequities.”

For those who, out of good judgment, missed the play, it’s about a man named Martin who admits to his wife of 22 years that he is having an affair with a barnyard animal named Sylvia. She laughs at first, although as Martin is played he doesn’t seem like that much of a kidder, but then it connects: Her husband is really sleeping with a goat.

We used to have goats, but I want to say right off that I never touched them. They didn’t even like me. Their names were Lucy and Melody. Along with a horse named Shorty, they were left to us by our daughter who at one time was a member of the 4-H Club and loved animals. When she discovered cars and boys, however, it was so long Shorty, adios Lucy, au revoir Melody.

I didn’t understand the goats anymore than I understood Albee’s play. They were testy to me and exceptionally kind to my wife, who, by way of explaining the difference, simply said, “Goats know.” What they knew continues to escape me, but I guess it had to do with some sort of aura of hostility that surrounds me.

They followed Cinelli around the yard like strange-looking dogs but bucked at me even when I tried to feed them or give them water. I came to look upon them only as a variation on mutton stew.

In “Sylvia,” Martin’s son, Billy (Billy Goat? Who knows), is gay, which further encourages the cognoscenti to nod and say, “Ah-ha,” in realization of the underlying (there’s that word again) anguish of confused sexuality. Or maybe of the antipathy that abounds in blue-area America toward homosexuality. Whatever.

Due to my not paying much attention in the drama class a long time ago, I missed all of that. Perhaps it was explained when Martin informed his shocked wife, Stevie, that, while in group therapy to discover whether his romp with a goat was odd, he learned that other men were having affairs with pigs and geese. It was this revelation that he felt legitimized his sexual dalliance with a goat. I’m not sure whether he double-dated with the man and his goose or the pig-lover, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

I don’t express my opinion much among serious theater-goers because it tends to reveal my ignorance; how I missed the double entendres and the parallel worlds in the plot that everyone else seemed to perceive. I also don’t comment publicly about art, of which I also have very little knowledge.

For instance, there was a plain white canvas by a famous painter that was in an exhibition I once attended. It was nothing but white, no shadows, no little lines that modern artists love so much, just a large, colorless canvas. I really tried hard to figure out what the man was trying to say but eventually decided that I was not one of those privileged to understand its secret meaning.

During the time I stood staring at it, others observed the white on white with deep appreciation for its subtleties, its shades of truth and its sinuous tortility.

I would guess that it was probably the sinuous tortility I missed in “Sylvia” that similarly left me with an inability to fathom the deeper meaning of love in the barnyard between man and goat. I will settle, however, for that notion that there are some things, thank God, that I was never intended to know.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.