Good literature often attempts to challenge our beliefs. It forces us to look inside ourselves, to evaluate our boundaries, to ask ourselves why we feel the way we do. It pokes and prods the edges of our comfort zones, stretching them in new ways.

But you have to sympathize with modern writers, faced with an increasingly open-minded audience. Fifty years ago, interracial relationships were the stuff of discord. Twenty years ago, it was homosexuality. What's left? Edward Albee provides one answer in his fantastic "The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?" playing at ACT until July 10. The caprine coitus that occurs before the play is the equivalent of the the man-on-man action that might have shocked us in the 1980's, though Albee manages to offer a wrinkle on even that theme that appalled some of our gay friends.

Photo by Melissa Schneider

Once Martin's barnyard trysts are revealed, we watch his wife Stevie's dismay, carried along by the weight of years of happy marriage, butting up against Martin's attempts to be understood. We challenge anyone to remain unaffected as Pamela Reed transmits raw waves of betrayal and hurt, culminating in a brutal act. And though the audience understands her agony, we also sympathize with Don McManus's Martin: Is he confused? Has something about his life triggered this? Or is he reaching some deeper understanding of himself by recognizing his love for "Sylvia" ("How do you know her name?" asks Stevie. "Was she wearing a tag?"). Larger questions ring between the lines: What's taboo? And why? Should there be tolerance for people who cross those lines, no matter how briefly, no matter how many others do? Ross, Martin's best friend, is the outsider looking in, society's judgment incarnate.

The dialog shows typical Albee flair, with verbal slaps that made us laugh even as the drama held us in its grip. The characters even digress from their argument to give compliments about particularly apt usages and allusions. Martin and Stevie's gay son adds comic relief as he sporadically interrupts the argument, but his last line, the last of the play, is poignant and heavy with the emotion of all that has happened.