Word: agata
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Angelo, the inquisitor, arrives at the house of Agata, a widow who lives with her daughter and sister-in-law. Angelo claims to have been a constant companion to Agata's husband before his death, and he uses this claims to make Agata confide her loneliness and insecurity, thus propelling her ultimately to accept him and the freedom he represents...
...there is a conceptual failing in director Leland Moss's rendering of Goat Island, it is that he makes Angelo, and not Agata, the play's center. This leaves the three women on too much of an equal and collectively subordinate level. Moss has had to miscast himself as Angelo, which in large measure explains this shift in emphasis, since he plays the part with too little earthly charisma, and too much surface charm, to be merely an agent of anything. Angelo emerges as a likeable rather than loveable character, and his appeal reaches as much to the audience...
Partly as a result, Jane Wingert cannot make a truly strong character out of Agata. Only at the very end, when she is on stage alone, do we get a sense that all the forces of Goat Island should direct themselves on her. And this comes as something of an anticlimax, because Moss has made almost too much of Angelo, giving him a weight he can't sustain in the play's resolution...