The people Generic Theatre usually have their ear to ground when it comes to the cutting edge, the new, the hip and hot, or the really unusual. This year’s production, currently onstage at the Players’ Ring, fits all three categories.

Edward Albee’s “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?” follows the playwright’s usual pattern of keeping the audience on the edge of the seat, wondering what’s really happening—Captain Subtext is generally the star of any Albee play, open sexuality has a strong supporting role. In 1963, his play “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. However, the board’s advisory committee was so horrified by the content of the play that they overruled the decision, and no drama prize was awarded that year.

Albee dares to speak of things the rest of us do not. He will always be celebrated for this, and he will always need to keep a bodyguard close by because of it.

The people Generic Theatre usually have their ear to ground when it comes to the cutting edge, the new, the hip and hot, or the really unusual. This year’s production, currently onstage at the Players’ Ring, fits all three categories.

Edward Albee’s “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?” follows the playwright’s usual pattern of keeping the audience on the edge of the seat, wondering what’s really happening—Captain Subtext is generally the star of any Albee play, open sexuality has a strong supporting role. In 1963, his play “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. However, the board’s advisory committee was so horrified by the content of the play that they overruled the decision, and no drama prize was awarded that year.

Albee dares to speak of things the rest of us do not. He will always be celebrated for this, and he will always need to keep a bodyguard close by because of it.

In “The Goat,” we have what seems your perfect happy Manhattan family: parents Martin and Stevie (Alan Huisman and Helen Brock), still madly in love after 22 years, and a happy, healthy 17-year-old boy Billy (Camden Brown). Martin doesn’t let the fact that Billy has recently proclaimed his homosexuality upset him—after all, as he and his best friend since childhood, Ross (Mike Pomp), decide, it’s probably just a phase.

During an interview for a project of Ross’, Martin crumbles under the pressure of a secret he’s been keeping. He’s in fallen in love; he’s been having a sexual affair. He’s still madly in love with Stevie. As the opening scenes show, these two know each other so well one can finish the other’s sentences better than the first one can. But the love he knows with Sylvia is so pure, so honest and true and without any need for words, that he can’t give her up.

And yes, as the title indicates, Sylvia is a goat.

Horrified by this information, Ross thinks on it for a while, decides that his old friend Martin doesn’t deserve his amazing wife or his incredible family—and sends Stevie a letter, that Billy, when he gets the mail, unwittingly calls to her attention. When Stevie finds the letter…. Well, let’s just say any wife would have a hard time dealing with an extramarital dalliance. The fact that she has to deal with bestiality as well adds up to the explosive ripping off of the protective cover that is their marriage. In true Albee fashion, all the secrets come spilling out, all wounds are exposed, every last one.

Under the direction of Richard DiMario, Huisman and Brock’s portrayal of a happy family thrown into the deepest pits of despair is agonizing to watch. The fiery-eyed Brock strips back layer after layer of hurt—pain, anger, denial, and back again. Huisman’s desperate attempts to make his family understand, when he doesn’t completely understands himself, is equally painful—like watching a drowning man trying to reach shore.

Camden Brown is perhaps the most riveting of all the performers, and that’s saying something. He’s fiercely protective of his mother, and he’s furious with his father, but also loves him with the same desperation with which he loves his mother. In fact, in this whole wide scary world, he seems to consider them the only two close-to-perfect people he’s ever met. This situation opens up things in his mind and his perceptions that go beyond words, that go deeper than any of the socially acceptable things he’s been taught. He’s been thrown into the eye of the hurricane and he’s just trying to find something, anything, to hang on to.

“The Goat” is about peeling back the onionskin of the perfect family, and finding out what’s really there. The question is, can you live with the layers beneath?

“The Goat or Who is Sylvia?” plays through March 30 at the Players’ Ring, 105 Marcy St., in Portsmouth. Performances are at 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and 7 p.m. on Sundays. Call 603-436-8123 for reservations.