Skip to main contentStranded on a rubbish heap, an old, mangy goat ruminates on the lot of life and the constant agony one finds therein. Tethered to a stake and left to forage in trash, the Goat imagines himself as not a goat but some other, higher creatures. That's the opening of Portland Center Stage's O Lovely Glowworm which, at base, is the Goat's fantasy life, built from the detritus of Ireland in the early 20th Century.
Not the most promising locale to match playwright Glen Berger's subtitle ("or Scenes of Great Beauty"), considering that the Ireland of 1910 to 1924 (where Berger places the action) is a period of upheaval, war and deprivation. But as with the Irishman Samuel Beckett's Winnie, it's the little things that can lead to happy days and transcendence.
In his working journal for the play under one of its original titles, The Goat's Carcass, Berger wrote the following entry in 2003: "Edward Curséd Albee has a play on Broadway entitled The Goat. So we have changed the title to O Lovely Glowworm." Still, it's about a goat.
Why the profusion of goats on stage, suddenly, and what does it say about our age? It's perhaps, considering the times we are forced to inhabit, a communal search for expiation of our follies and failings, as the goat, classically, is an animal for sacrifice and "scaping." Albee's goat stands for sacrifice (brutally so), while Berger's garrulous ruminant starts as a scapegoat but soon takes on another aspect of The Goat: the symbolic transformation from a material being into a spiritual one.
Director Randy White (backed by excellent technical support) has fully realized Berger's wonderfully capricious play with a fine cast. Ebbe Roe Smith takes on a number of roles, from that of the Goat (a poor, shabby escapee from a defunct museum diorama) to our old friend Death (in the guise of a taxidermist). Sharonlee McLean is hilarious as the antithesis to every twinkling-eyed Irish mother of song, and Troy West, Tim True, Christine Calfas and Jim Iorio are equally good in their various forms of the Goat's febrile imagination.
What makes Berger's play so rich and rewarding is that it offers a goat's feast of scraps to digest, making it a piece that's welcoming to different interpretations. I became engrossed in the play's playful use of astrology and Jungian psychology. At the center of Glowworm is a choppy lake that everyone of the Goat's creation strives to reach, and in that lake is a Mermaid. Why a mermaid? The sign of Capricorn is a Mergoat: half goat, half fish. The land goat is a symbol of the ego, while the sea goat is a doorkeeper to the collective unconscious. Berger's accomplishment is to have created a comical journey toward spiritual wholeness.
At the end, the Taxidermist situates the Goat at a plastic nativity scene, witnessing the birth of Christianity's mythic sacrifice and scapegoat (a Capricorn). And the Star of Bethlehem, if it was a meteor, might be streaking overhead, leaving a trail. A true "glowworm," that is.
PCS at the Winningstad Theatre, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway, 274-6588. 7 pm Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 8 pm Thursdays, 8 pm Fridays-Saturdays, 2 and 7 pm Sundays. Closes April 24. $15-$55.
WWeek 2015