About the Play:

Hogan's Goat has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Male Scenes and Male/Male Scenes.

Hogan's Goat is a full-length drama by William Alfred. The story of a man's destructive drive for political power. Hogan's Goat is a battleground between faith and ambition in an Irish Immigrant Community in the midst of a mayoral election in Brooklyn, 1890.

Hogan's Goat is set in a turn-of-the-century Brooklyn populated by Irish immigrants teeming with hopes of "the American Dream". The longtime mayor Ned Quinn has been caught in a scandal and the time is ripe for a reform ticket. Ambitious Matthew Stanton has his eye on the mayor's chair, idolized and encouraged by his wife Kathleen. However, the ruthless mayor Quinn uncovers a weakness in the upstart's past: he has not yet married Kathleen in Church because he is still legally wed to the older, well-to-do Aggie Hogan. Aggie, mayor Quinn's old love, now lay dying but once, as Stanton's mistress, had helped him to his first political success. When the unscrupulous mayor Quinn plays this hand, Stanton loses the race and blinded by rage, lashes out at Kathleen, bringing both to a tragic end. A highly volatile, though realistic, drama in blank verse, Hogan's Goat is brimming with backroom and barroom atmosphere.

Hogan's Goat premiered in 1965 off-Broadway at New York's American Place Theatre and ran during the next eighteen months there and at the East 74th Street Theatre starring Faye Dunaway (before Bonnie and Clyde), Ralph Waite (before The Waltons), and Barnard Hughes (before Da). It was the surprise hit of the season, winning the 1965-66 Theatre Club Gold Medal for best play, gaining William Alfred the 1965 Drama Desk – Vernon Rice award, and made a star of Faye Dunaway.

Cast: 5 female, 10 male, 5 extras

What people say:

"Has the rhythms of highly charged verse, verse with a sting in its tail." — New York Herald-Tribune

"Hogan's Goat, William Alfred's verse-drama of political ambition amid the Irish community of Brooklyn in 1890, has juicy roles for a variety of types, florid language that echoes O'Neill, and a plot that unearths multiple secrets in the course of a cutthroat mayoral campaign." — Los Angeles Times

"...filled with meaty character roles...." — Backstage

About the Playwright:

William Alfred (1922-1999) was an American playwright and a long-time Professor of English literature at Harvard University. His lyrical play, Hogan's Goat, about turn-of-the-century Brooklyn-Irish politics, had a long and successful off-Broadway run in 1966 and provided a breakout role for actress Faye Dunaway, who became his lifelong friend.