Theater Reviews—

An Empty Nest Syndrome At Playhouse On The Green

By Julie Stern

 BRIDGEPORT — Having seen AR. Gurney’s Sylvia in various local incarnations three times in the past few years I was starting to get pretty tired of it, feeling that once you know the story and have seen the gimmicks, the novelty wears off and the time could be better spent watching the baseball playoffs.

However, director Terence Lamude at Bridgeport’s Playhouse on the Green, and his four person cast of consummate professionals brought the play to life all over again as a wonderful, imaginative, drolly hilarious piece of theater.

For those who are unfamiliar with the show (and if you have never seen it you should get down to Bridgeport and do so immediately), Sylvia is a stray mutt who follows a man, Greg, home from Central Park (her name is conveniently engraved on a medallion around her neck) and precipitates a crisis in his marriage, when his wife, Kate, doesn’t want any more dogs in their life.

It’s actually a mid-life crisis. With the nest empty, their last child away at college, Greg and Kate have given up their suburban life and moved to a condo in the city, where Kate has at last begun a fulfilling career, developing English curriculum to bring Shakespeare to the inner city middle school. Greg, meanwhile, has seen his own job go through a metamorphosis thanks to a series of corporate mergers and takeovers until he no longer understands what he does. He just knows that he hates it.

It is on an afternoon of hookey from his office that Greg meets Sylvia in the park, and it’s a case of mutual infatuation. Gurney’s conceit is to have Sylvia played by a human actress who communicates in words (apart from the occasional bark) but whose words express only those thoughts that a dog would say- such as “I love you, I think you’re god” or  “OUT? Did I hear the word OUT? I LOVE going OUT!”  or “Pardon me while I sniff this lamppost to check my messages…”

Portrayed by Jama Williamson as an outrageously funky teenager, impulsive, oversexed (with regard to Dalmatians and Goldens) but poutingly adorable, Sylvia fights for her place in the household of the man she loves, while his wife strives to get rid of her.

In addition to this emotional triangle, there are three other characters to the story. Tom is a member of the Central Park dog-walking fraternity who becomes Greg’s mentor; Phyllis is a society matron who is driven back to drink by Sylvia’s attentions; and Leslie is a psychiatrist of indeterminate gender who attempts to counsel the family back together. Bridgeport’s production features Bill Kux playing all three roles, and doing so with delight.

The show is wonderful at capturing dog behavior, as well as the bonds of love that connect humans with their animals, and the poignancy of  a certain stage of life where nothing seems important, and people get very lonely.

Like John Cheever before him, Gurney is recognized as the chronicler of the American WASP, faithfully capturing the nuances of what is becoming a minority culture of polite, fine-boned, well-educated, aging preppies, in a world that no longer recognizes their sense of entitlement nor envies them their privileges.

That is not as significant in this play as it is in other Gurney works (Love Letters, The Dining Room and Scenes From American Life, for example) because the yearning for the unconditional devotion of a dog is something that crosses all class and ethnic lines. However, Martin Le Platney as Greg and Mia Dillon as Kate seem effortlessly transported out of Darien or Chappaqua of the 1950s.

If you have seen the show before and liked it, this is a good time to introduce it to a friend.

Strangely, it is not a particularly good show for bringing your children, despite the wonderfully comic dog stuff. The language is a bit rough (though nothing they haven’t heard – or said – on the school bus). More importantly, they might have trouble understanding the kind of crisis that leads Greg to his offbeat involvement. They would probably just be really angry at Kate and feel she should move back to the ‘burbs.

(Performances continue Thursday through Saturday evenings and weekend afternoons until November 2. The theater, at 177 State Street, can be contacted at 203-333-3666.)