SYLVIA

by

A.R. Gurney

3 March to 25 March 2000

Directed by Simone de Haas

Cast List

Review

Sylvia

Alison Cotes - The Courier Mail

Who would have thought that the lovely Sarah Kennedy would turn out to be a perfect little bitch? But she has, in one of the funniest shows to hit Brisbane this year, Mixed Company's production of A R Gurney's American farce "Sylvia''.
Sylvia is a street-smart New York mutt, a stray dog picked up in Central Park by Greg, a middle-aged professional man suffering badly from Empty Nest Syndrome. His wife Kate, played with commendable stoicism by Dale Murison, is relishing the freedom from kids, mortgages and children, but Greg has a big empty space in his heart, and eventually he has to make some serious decisions about whether his wife or his dog is more important to him.
John Dommett plays Greg as a man we can both sympathise with and despise for his weakness, and he treads the very fine edge between comedy and bad taste remarkably well. For there is a serious and potentially nasty sub-text here, Greg's obsession with his new dog bordering on the deviant, but Dommett's lightness of touch ensures that this remains in the background.
Who is Sylvia? The reference is to the song in Shakespeare's "The Two Gentlemen of Verona", which provides a character sketch for the dog - "holy, fair and wise is she: the heavens such grace did lend her, that she might admired be."
Fair, certainly, and clever (if not exactly wise) - but holy? Not the way Sarah Kennedy plays Sylvia. This mutt is wicked, the kind of dog Woody Allen would cast if he were doing an animal film (please don't suggest it to him!) She wisecracks, sneaks her way onto the sofa, feeds on demand, knows exactly when to fawn and play cute, and alternately sulks and charms like every spoilt dog (and child) you've ever seen. It's a very difficult role to get right, for the temptation is to err on the side of unbearable kitsch, but Kennedy never makes a false move. Admittedly she is given some good dialogue, but she gets the doggy gestures - the yaps, the sloppy kisses, the rollovers, the worm-squirm, the itchy nose - to perfection, and Simone de Haas's costuming is simply brilliant, from the scruffy grey patched little-dog-lost jumper to the suave black tights, pink sweater and black fevvers after the trip to the beauty parlour.
She's disobedient, self-willed, manipulative and sexy, and you can see why Greg adores her and Kate hates her. For Sylvia is a combination of the mistress and the adored teenage daughter, both of whom are rightly feared by every sensible wife. So if Dale Murison fails to lighten up as Kate, we can quite understand - she's having to hold herself rigid while seeing her husband being stolen from under her nose, and there's nothing she can do about it. Murison and Dommett made an ideal pair - as he goes soft and begins to hate his job, her career takes off and she becomes commensurately hard.
They try therapy (Brad Ashwood is a wonderful androgynous counsellor), and talking to friends (Ashwood again delightfully lightens the potential tension first as Kate's mate Phyllis and then as Greg's park friend Tom), but ultimately they have to work it out for themselves.
There are some hysterically funny moments in the play - I particularly loved the post-spaying hot-water-bottle scene and the off-stage sexual encounter with the Labrador - and most of them belong to Sarah Kennedy, who shows a comic side to her talent that I haven't seen before. But she wouldn't have been nearly as successful without the solid performances from the rest of the cast, which make for a happy melding of moods as well as happy ending.
Both play and production are a delight - it's great fun, but it also has something serious to say, which makes it far more satisfying than a mere frivolous romp.
Even more than usual, Mixed Company has got the mix just right. It's worth a return run later in the year.

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