Goats
Review from The Windy City Times
Goats
Playwright: written and performed by Alan Berks
At: Strawdog Theatre Company, 3829 N. Broadway
Phone: (773) 375-2541; $10
Runs through: Dec. 11
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
When a one-man show opens with the words, “The first time I went to Israel right away I headed for The Wall” we anticipate an evening of this-land-is-mine chest-beating-heartfelt angst of interest only to the sufferer. But our narrator is a brash young American Jew, a recent Northwestern University graduate and thus well-versed in the latest pilpul wandejahr-ing through Europe with all the intellectual confidence and romantic expectations characteristic of his kin. The first of these is what turns him back from his shrine, and the second lands him with a job tending goats for an elderly and eccentric cheesemaker.
The spiritual benefits of living close to nature being the cornerstone of our mythic tradition, we are not surprised that this privileged Huckleberry Finn eventually comes to realize that true piety is not in observance of rituals, but in compassion for all living things. His journey of discovery is not a swift one: the animals for whose safety he is responsible are not intrinsically lovable creatures, and his attempts to impose a Rousseauian holiness on his taciturn employer (the essence of whose gruff oracles boil down to “stop getting in your own way”) are impeded by evidence of the latter’s decidedly secular savvy.
Author-performer Alan Berks-whom playgoers might remember as the charming stranger in The Last Seder at the Organic last spring-is careful not to make his naive protagonist too much of a jerk, but instead projects an ingenuous candor that even acknowledges his show’s borrowed quarters at Strawdog Theatre on Ryan Hall’s set for Vintage Red And The Dust Of The Road. (Describing an Israeli dwelling, he confides to us, “I expected a sort of rustic charm — kind of like this scenery from the other play.”)
Indeed, so engaging is Berks’ very presence and his obvious delight in recounting his adventures that only long afterward are we aware of the formidable literary foundation on which this deceptively casual yarn is structured. (Hint: goats, like lambs, are the traditional symbols of innocence, humility and sacrifice.) The opening-night results, while in need of some paring down, make for a thoroughly enjoyable travelogue — in more ways than one.
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