"The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?" opens on Martin, a prominent architect, and his wife Stevie in their suburban living room. The occasion is Martin's 50th birthday. While preparing for an interview which will be given by a family friend, Ross, Stevie asks Martin about a business card found in his pocket, as well as a peculiar scent which was hanging around her husband. Martin confesses to having fallen in love with a goat, Sylvolia, which Stevie takes as a joke and the conversation moves on.
Enter Ross, who quickly becomes frustrated as Martin is consistently distracted during the interview process. Martin reveals that he is having an affair, at which point he shows Ross a picture of Sylvia, who is in fact a goat.
Ross writes Stevie a letter, revealing the horrifying actions of his friend and Stevie's husband. As the pair fight, their son Billy, a gay teen, enters. He returns and exits at various points during the ensuing fight, mainly because he is worried for his mother and does not want the vase he made for her birthday to be broken. The fight causes the destruction of most of the furniture in the room. Martin insists that Sylvia loves him, also.
Billy, heartbroken and angry at his father, who often disparaged Billy for being gay despite his own truly deviant behavior, re-enters and ends up proclaiming love for his father and kissing him. This scene is interrupted by Ross, who is disgusted, prompting Martin to defend himself by implying that it is normal and that a friend (who, it can be inferred, is actually Martin) has had a worse experience involving a very young child. Stevie returns at the close of the play, dragging with her the dead body of Sylvia.
This play deals with taboo themes with unabashed candor and is considered to have contained the ideals of a tragedy.
