Word: stantons
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Alfred makes the most of traditional devices. His protagonist is a man of pride and ambition who falls. There is a Fool, Petey Boyle, a hanger-on of Stanton's. There is a prophetic Priest, Father Coyne. The confrontations between Stanton and Quinn are carefully spaced and prepared. Alfred's nine years of writing have produced the highly controlled play which his buoyant, poetic dialogue needs for grounding...
...last scene, sprung. He uses the various areas of Kert Lundell's multi-chambered set cautiously, circling the scenes around the back and sides. When the last scene of the first act finally appears down-stage center the effect is electric. It is in this meeting between Stanton and Quinn at Hogan's wake, played against an insistent Rosary on the speaker system, that the dramatic power which Alfred and Roll have held backs on the audience...
...jump out of context and character for poetic effect. Combined with the painfully sparse movement of the first few scenes, this makes the early part of Hogan's Goat easier to listen to than to watch. By the end of Act I, however, as Quinn spits in Matthew Stanton's face, the action catches up with the language...
Ralph Waite as Matthew Stanton springs from an Actor's Studio background well-suited to his role. Following the general tone he underplays the first act and opens up in the second. He successfully completes a vastly difficult assignment: gaining the audience's sympathy but not their pardon. A more flamboyant actor would have fallen off that particular tightrope...
...Dunaway (Kathleen Stanton) turns the directional restraint into stiffness. Especially in the first act her voice is tense, her gestures mannerd. The well-born Irishwoman who left "God and country" for a tavern-keeper might have some residual hauteur, but she certainly wouldn't be cold. Only in her death scene at the end of the play does she loosen up, and become passionate enough to assert her role...