For our pairs/group script work at EAS this term, I was given the opening few pages from this play. It seemed like a good idea to add it to my reading list for the week, as well as being worth getting hold of the script so I had my own copy since we're not allowed to take home or mark up the copies that were handed out in class. It's also good practice to read the entire play when working on scenes and monologues anyway. The fact it's "not mandatory" for this particular class is not the relevant point.
The title, if the two lines are reversed, basically spoils the plot - Sylvia (the other "woman") is, in fact, a goat. The action of the play surrounds the leading man revealing the truth to a friend, who decides the only reasonable thing to do is to tell the man's wife, and the subsequent fallout with his wife and son. That he has apparently been occasionally screwing a goat for the last six months appears to be just one of a host of problems within the family. With the existing tension that lies between a homosexual son and his trying-to-be-understanding parents, and the wife's concerns for her husband's possible early signs of dementia (which may in fact be a manifestation of his own worry about his affair) the revalation about Sylvia not surprisingly breaks all three family members down completely and the latter half of the play is almost entirely pitched so that everyone on stage is yelling, crying, breaking things or all three. When she storms out and returns later with the now slaughtered Sylvia, it feels like a small victory for cheated victims everywhere, and because the mistress in question is a goat, it's not going to result in doing time for murder.
There are some fantastically emotional walls of text for Stevie (the wife) which would make potentially great monologues, so this is certainly one to earmark for that.
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