Well, Albee Darned

Wanted: Girlfriend who walks around naked. Everywhere. All the time.

Assuming you're not finicky about details, meet your new lover:

BBBLLEEEAAATTTTTT.

Cute, in a homely sort of way. Not a loquacious conversationalist, though.

"He's saying there's a profound difference between desire and pure love, that it can surprise you where you can find love," says Erica Griffin, director of "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia," Edward Albee's lust-for-livestock story about a man who discovers the bestiality within. "Love has universal power, but society has inflicted random rules of what we tolerate or don't tolerate."

The legendary playwright who asked if we were afraid of Virginia Woolf wonders if we love Sylvia the Goat -- after all, the man penned "The Zoo Story" -- in this College of Southern Nevada production.

In the drama that also draws laughs approaching Neil Simon levels, Martin, a middle-age architect, has a fling with the title creature, dismaying his wife, gay son and best friend.

"Albee is a little strange," says Ken Kucan, who plays the man finding amore with a four-legged paramour. "But Martin is a fascinating character. He's very bright and well-educated, but at the same time, he's obviously suffering from some mental problems."

At the very least, a sexual kink that would make Jenna Jameson blanch.

"He doesn't see anything wrong with it," Kucan says. "He's not necessarily deserving of sympathy, but certainly understanding."

Taking its title from the song, "Who is Sylvia," from William Shakespeare's "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," Albee's treatise on taboos and tolerance took the 2003 Tony Award for best play, starring Bill Pullman and Mercedes Ruehl, later replaced by Sally Field.

"It's very clever how Albee gets into your subconscious and says, 'Hey, what are the limits of your own tolerance? What do you allow yourself to think about?' " Griffin says. "It's a great play to do in Las Vegas, because it's a community that has arbitrary tolerance. If you live next door to a stripper, it doesn't bother you, but how many pedophiles are on your street? That is disturbing."

Those in Martin's orbit as he goes ga-ga for a goat include his baffled wife, Stevie, who gets to the heart of her husband's heart-wrenching betrayal when she asks, simply: "How can you love me when you love so much less?" Further complicating the family dynamic is Billy, the couple's gay, teenage son.

Gay? Forbidden love? Intolerance? "Billy" -- as in billy goat? Can you spell S-Y-M-B-O-L-I-S-M?

"The device of a homosexual son makes it resonate because the father tolerates the son's homosexuality, but on a level he's disturbed by it," Griffin says. "And the son tolerates the father (insert colorful verb for lovemaking) the goat, but he's disturbed by it."

(Before you ask: There is no depiction of actual barnyard boogie between Martin and his fur-femme fatale.)

And in Ross, Martin's unwisely chosen confidant -- he writes a letter to Stevie, revealing his friend's pervy predilection -- Albee creates a character New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley called the embodiment of "liberal hypocrisy."

"He's married and has no compunctions about ignoring his own marriage vows," Kucan says about Martin's personal Judas. "But he's profoundly upset over Martin's involvement with a goat. Now I'm not recommending goats" -- good, otherwise we'd be recommending therapists -- "but Ross reflects that hypocrisy in Judeo-Christian society."

Stylistically, the play shifts to suit the plot oddities. "It starts out as a naturalistic, living-room play, these two characters introduced to us who seem very Neil Simon-like," Griffin says. "But with our technical support, it turns more abstract, with lighting techniques and music that's like classical banjo music on speed."

Punctuated by staccato dialogue, the 100-minute "Goat" gallops along with a snappy rhythm born of Albee's writing device that Griffin calls "imperfect listening," in which one character speaks a line another character might respond to three lines later, with other things discussed in between. "That's how people talk, but it's hard to write like that -- it's delicious to listen to," says the director who's walking a tonal tightrope.

"It's finding a balance, as with any dark comedy," she says. "The more serious people are about dramatic things, the funnier it is. In those moments of high tension and drama, immense comedy comes out. It gets pretty ridiculous."

We're imagining date night. At the movies, what does Martin buy Sylvia at the refreshment counter?

"Jumbo bag of hay, please ... with butter."

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.