AISLE SAY Berkshires
SYLVIA
by A.R. Gurney
Directed by Anders Cato
at Berkshire Theatre
Group/Fitzpatrick Main Stage until July 30
A.R. Gurney established his place
in contemporary American drama when he wrote The Dining Room, the saga of WASP culture set in upstate New York.
Prior to that play, and long since, Gurney has examined various variations of
that play’s themes. And then, in the mid-90’s, he wrote Sylvia, a play in which he borrows very little from himself. The
play, a serious comedy of mild manners, is now running at the Berkshire Theater
Festival’s Fitzpatrick Main Stage until July 30. It is not the best of Gurney,
but it has more than enough to offer audiences who want to laugh – and as
with any play by Gurney, there is enough to think about, for those who wish to
do so.
Greg (David Adkins) is waffling
through life: his kids are grown and out of the house, his job is hardly
fulfilling, he is seeking soul satisfaction. He arrives home one afternoon with
a perky young woman who is deeply attached to him, and who acts and speaks
without any apparent filtering system of her own. She is charming (an very
charmingly played by Rachel Bay Jones)
and it’s easy to understand Greg’s fascination with her. Soon enough we come to
realize that Sylvia, the young woman in question, is actually a dog that Greg
‘met’ at the park that afternoon and that he has taken her home. Almost as soon
as we learn this fact, Greg makes it clear that his wife, Kate (Jurian Hughes) may be far less
delighted with the houseguest. She is more than ‘less delighted’ – having
raised her kids and having started a new career, she is no longer looking for,
or willing to accept, the role of caregiver.
So far, Gurney’s unique triangle provides a degree of emotional tension and
a unique premise. What follows isn’t especially satisfying – the growing
strain between husband and wife continues without us ever understanding more
than we were given at the outset – uncharacteristically, Gurney repeats
himself in scene after scene: Greg wants a better life and Kate wants the dog
out of the house. In spite of several scenes in which Greg and his wife
encounter other people (all played by Walter
Hudson) nothing new is added to help us better know the central characters
and why they simply can’t talk to one another.
And where is Sylvia during all this? She stays in the apartment or is taken
to the park. Occasionally, she sits on the furniture even though Kate has
forbidden her to. She has a variety of sweet and often funny one-liners and she
is given the play’s moments of insight. But for all this, Sylvia matters less
and less as the play proceeds – and Ms. Jones is in no way responsible
for this. She is entirely captivating. The problem is that Gurney appears to
have set himself a situation that does him in. The jokey set-up of frisky,
young woman who is really a frisky dog has nowhere to go. And what’s most
fascinating about the evening is watching and listening to a skilled writer
struggle to solve the problem he has set himself. That he doesn’t find the
solution is unsatisfying, of course, but it is also rather edifying. We don’t
often get to see the second or third tier plays by writers like Gurney, because
he has so much that is fist quality.
The production is brightly designed and uses the stage space with ease and appropriate
simplicity. Adkins is ideally suited to the role of the husband. He has
considerable personal charm, easy warmth and a gentle charisma that goes a very
long way to drawing us into a world that could easily keep us at a distance. He
and Jones have real chemistry, the type that could so easily sustain a romantic
comedy for two actors. Jurian Hughes, as the wife, is given far less to work
with and after several of her scenes I was struck by the possibility that the
playwright, himself, was not all that interested in her or her arguments. He
seemed far more taken by his smart-as-a-whip doggie.
The play ends as we know it must: Sylvia will be moving on. However, the feeble
crafting of the final scene serves only to reinforce the unsteady foundation
laid throughout. Like the end of a film where titles roll by to fill in what
happened to the characters we’d met earlier, Gurney has written a coda for Greg
and Kate that ties up all the ends. The audience has had a very good time, but
I was left thinking how much better it might have been if the playwright had
had a reason for having written the play.
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